-region> and U.S.—protected South Korea.  Both Korean regimes hoped to unify Korea through military means.  Military clashes and fighting never stopped along the 38^th parallel. The South Korean leader Syngman Rhee continually churned out war propaganda and repeatedly initiated military provocations after U.S. troops withdrew, and Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang actively considered an attack on the South.[10]

       Stalin believed that the U.S. withdrew its troops from the Korean peninsula to “give Rhee’s army freedom to act,” and to “untie Southern reactionaries’ hands and feet.”[11] In order to deal with this threat, the Soviet Union increased its military aid to North Korea.  At Kim Il Sung’s request, the Soviet Union agreed to offer North Korea military-technological support as part of a trade agreement.  In 1949, Stalin sent the following items to Pyongyang: 100 military planes with different functions, 100 tanks, 57 armored vehicles, 102 automatic cannons, 44 foldable landing-craft carriers, rubber boats and various types of guns, ammunition, and military equipment.[12] At this point, however, Moscow’s intention was to strengthen North Korean defensive capabilities rather than to encourage offensive action.[13] Stalin insisted on reducing tensions between the Koreas and avoiding Soviet involvement in the conflict, even though some Soviet military leaders preferred to take military action.  When Terentii Shtykov, Soviet ambassador to Pyongyang, proposed to dismantlinge the navy base in Tsinkai and air base in Pyongyang after U.S. troops withdrew from South Korea, Stalin quickly approved the proposal. Soviet policymakers were concerned that North Korea could make use of those military bases to attack the South, and involve the Soviet Union in an embarrassing situation.[14]  The Soviets also took measures to stop North Korea’s counterattacks against the South, fearing that the North Korean Communists might turn the tensions on the peninsula into an uncontrollable crisis.

        North Korean leaders, however, hoped to use the attacks from the south as an opportunity achieve Korean unification through military means.  On 3 September 1949, Shtykov reported to Moscow that Mun Il, Kim Il Sung’s personal secretary, believed South Korea intended to seize the area of the Ongjin peninsular north of the 38th parallel and bomb the cement plant in the city of Kaisiu. Kim Il Sung subsequently asked the Soviet Union for permission to take the Ongjin peninsula and South Korean territory from Ongjin to Kaesong to shorten the line of defense. Believing that his troops could occupy the whole of Korea in two weeks, at most two months, Kim Il Sung planned to continue southward actions if the international situation permitted.[15]

       Grigorii Ivanovich Tunkin, the Soviet charge d’affaires in Pyongyang, was instructed to meet  Kim Il Sung and Pak Hon-yong (head of Foreign Ministry in the Democratic People's Republic of  Korea).  After meeting with them on 12 and 13 September, he sent Moscow a detailed analysis of the military capabilities of both South Korea and North Korea, Kim Il Sung’s plans, and his own view on this issue.  According to Tunkin, Kim Il Sung assumed that the South Korean military force was not strong: “The northern army is superior to the southern army in technical equipment (tanks, artillery, planes), discipline, training of officers and troops, and morale-political relations.”  But if North Korea’s military action to seize the Ongjin pen