Although World War II ended in 1945, the aftermath of the war included continuing skirmishes with the Soviet Union, primarily through its surrogates, in both Europe and Asia. The Korean War was one of the more visible of those fights, and it led to a stalemate that continues to this day.
Although the war did not actually begin until June of 1950, the circumstances that led to it began long before. By the mid 1940s, Goncharov et al. (1993) reported that Kim Il Sung was already determined that Korea would be unified, and that it had to be unified by force. At that time, Kim was training in the Soviet Union, and he and many of the men he trained with provided the backbone of the North Korean government and military for many years.
Essentially, Kim was supported by the Soviet Union, and had stronger ties with that country, although China also supported North Korea in the struggle. His early training and his connection with Stalin were important determinants of his actions. Still, Kim basically acted on his own in attacking South Korea in June of 1950. The Soviet Union and China both knew that Kim intended to attack South Korea, but they did not know when or in what way (Goncharov et al., 1993).
There is considerable evidence that the United States also knew that North Korea intended to attack South Korea, and even some indication that the intelligence community had an idea of when that would occur (Stone, 1952). The United States was prepared for North Korea to invade South Korea and had already decided upon its foreign policy response. It had drafted plans to take that situation to the United Nations in order to deal with it as something other than a confrontation between the United States and either China or the Soviet Union.
There is not a lot of controversy about the war itself and the results that obtained. Essentially, North Korea moved into the southe
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