insula were to trigger a civil war, such a war might be difficult to win.  Therefore, Kim Il Sung hoped to avoid war, only seeking to secure the Ongjin peninsula and a portion of the territory of South Korea near Kaesong to the east of this peninsula.  Kim also expected Southern “partisans” to rise up when the North entered the South.  If everything went smoothly, North Korea could continue its southward march.  Tunkin felt that Kim’s limited military action would definitely lead to a civil war. He made it clear that “to begin the partial operation conceived by Kim Il Sung is inadvisable,” because the North was not strong enough to win a civil war quickly. A protracted war would place the North at a disadvantage, both militarily and politically.[16]    

Shtykov, on the other hand, supported Kim Il Sung’s plan. In a telegram to Stalin on 15 September, the Soviet ambassador reiterated the North Korean leader’s arguments:  The Korean people were eager to achieve unification, but they could not do so through peaceful means.  If North Korea did not act militarily, unification could be delayed for many years, and the reactionary South Korean regime would use that time to suppress the “democratic forces” in the South, establish a more powerful army to invade the North, and destroy all the institutions that the North had constructed in the past years. Shtykov argued that the political situation in the Korean Peninsula was favorable to North Korea.  Even though Pyongyang could not exclude the possibility that “the U.S. would intervene in this conflict and aid South Korea,” and that “the People’s Army is not strong enough quantitatively and qualitatively to wipe out Rhee’s army and occupy South Korea,” Shtykov still assumed that it was possible and appropriate to encourage Communist guerrillas in the South and offer other types of support to the North. In addition, Pyongyang, in Shtykov’s opinion, could “make use of Seoul’s provocation at the 38th parallel to punish South Korea by seizing the Ongjin peninsula and the region of Kaesong.” Shtykov also believed that since the Chinese revolution had gained its victory without America’s interference and the Korean people had demonstrated their “revolutionary enthusiasm after the withdrawal of U.S. troops,” the situation in the Far East made it a favorable moment for the Soviet Union to confront the United States.[17]  

Nevertheless, Stalin was reluctant to support military action in the Korean peninsula.  The Soviet Politburo discussed the Korean situation on 24 September, then instructed Shtykov to read its decision verbatim to Kim Il Sung and Pak Hon-yong:

Since at present North Korea does not have the necessary military superiority over South Korea, we have no choice but to acknowledge that a military attack on the South is ill-timed and therefore, from the military point of view, impermissible.... At present, very little has been done to develop the guerrilla movement and …prepare for a general uprising in South Korea.  Therefore, even from a political perspective, the attack on the South has not been prepared.

Moreover, the limited operation to attack the Ongjin peninsula and seize the Kaesong region could lead to “the beginning of a war between North and South Korea.”  The possibility of a prolonged war could then “give the Americans an excuse for any interference in Korean affairs.”  The Politburo concluded that

the struggle for the unification of Korea demands a concentration of maximum effort.  In the first place, the guerrilla movement must be developed, liberated areas must be created, and a general armed uprising in South Korea must be prepared for in order to overthrow the reactionary regime. . . . Second, the People’s Army of Korea must be strengthened in every way.[18]

This resolution clearly indicated that Moscow’s policy at the time was to encourage unification through revolution in the South rather than by military invasion from the North. It is interesting to note that, in another instruction drafted by  Nikolai Bulganin, Andrei Gromyko, and others, Shtykov was asked to remind Kim Il Sung that he had not done everything to achieve “peaceful unification.”  For instance, he had “overlooked the Declaration of Peaceful Unification issued by the National Front, which is an important and politically favorable document.”[19]

       North Korean leaders accepted Moscow