quipment worth $110 million, but Congress authorized only very small aid to South Korea in 1949-1950. South Korea's forces (ROK) had no heavy artillery, tanks, combat aircraft or anti-aircraft guns. According to Rees, "the ROK was little more than a constabulary force" (16). Its active forces in June 1950 numbered 65,000.
According to most accounts, Kim Il Sung sought and obtained Joseph Stalin's tentative approval to invade South Korea at a meeting in Moscow in November or December 1949 (Whelan 98). He returned to Moscow in late February or March with an invasion plan and was given the green light by Stalin who, nevertheless, cautioned him: "if you get kicked in the teeth, I shall not lift a finger. You have to ask Mao for all of the help" (Chace 291). Mao Ze-dong was informed and did not demur. In the spring of 1950, Whelan says "the Soviets made very large deliveries of military equipment to North Korea" (95). When they attacked South Korea on June 25, 1950, the North Korean People's Army (NKPA) had 135,000 troops, amply supplied with 150 Soviet-made T-34 tanks, heavy artillery, self-propelled guns and more than 200 combat aircraft and invasion plans developed by Soviet military advisers (Hastings 52-53; Goulden 35).
Hastings said that "Kim Il Sung's invasion of June 25, 1950 was an unprovoked act of raw aggression" (339). The communist line was that North Korea had reacted to "armed aggression" by South Korea "north of the 38th parallel" (Hastings 53). This assertion ran directly counter to the direct observations of United Nations and other neutral observers then in South Korea. The Big Lie of the communists was not remotely plausible because, as Whelan pointed out, "a country which suffered a full-scale invasion would be thrown more or less into confusion and compelled to retreat" (49).
Some revisionist historians, such as Kolko and Kolko, have suggested that General Douglas MacArthur, then Supreme Allied Commander in...