North Korea joins Warsaw Pact?

Is it possible for NK to do that? Can it mean Soviet soldiers stationing near the South Korean border?

BTW this is if Juche ideology doesn't exist at this TL
 
Is it possible for NK to do that? Can it mean Soviet soldiers stationing near the South Korean border?

BTW this is if Juche ideology doesn't exist at this TL

Do not think the Warzaw Pact would see this as anything else of a provocation of the US.....so why do it?

Proberly the Korean border is tense enough already, without Soviet troops being added to the situation. :)
 
Also is it possible for Mongolia to join? Can a WP North Korea also mean that the government might collapse in 1989-1991 period and reunify with the South?
 
I always wondered by China, Mongolia, and North Korea didn't join the Warsaw Pact. Japan, South Korea, and the ANZACs couldn't join NATO for obvious reasons, the communist countries bordered each other.

It would have been interesting to have Chinese troops stationed in Berlin and East German troops on the demilitarized zone...
 
If you were Moscow, would you really want to risk a Third World War because the Kim Il Sung risks invading South Korea again? (Remember that North Korea is even today still technically at war with the United States. It was an armistice, not a peace treaty, that was signed in 1953.) If North Korea does something rash, it is far better to keep the war localized than potentially force a war in Europe.
 
I always wondered by China, Mongolia, and North Korea didn't join the Warsaw Pact. Japan, South Korea, and the ANZACs couldn't join NATO for obvious reasons, the communist countries bordered each other.

It would have been interesting to have Chinese troops stationed in Berlin and East German troops on the demilitarized zone...

Given the Sino-Soviet split, China not joining the Warsaw Pact is rather obvious. There was animousity between Communist China and the Soviet Union since Stalin backed Chiang in the Civil War.

North Korea pretty much fell under China's sphere of influence after the Korean War, so that rules them out. Stalin was too cagey a politican to allow North Korea into the alliance anyways being they very well could touch off a war with the West that he'd suddenly be treaty bound to fight.

Mongolia, is very possible. More often I wonder why it was never annexed into the Soviet Union as Tannu Tuva was. Mongolia was a SSR on all but name.
 
To have the DPRK in the WP, a good POD would be to have Kim Il Sung removed from his post in 1956 and have him replaced with a more moderate and more pro-Soviet leader (this also butterflies juche and the Kim dynasty). This version of the DPRK would essentially be a Far East version of the DDR, complete with NK citizens able to receive SK and Japanese radio and tv broadcasts. Still, it would all collapse in 1989-90. Both Koreas reunite in 1990-91 and it's party time in Seoul!
 
BTW this is if Juche ideology doesn't exist at this TL

Juche is what has made the DPRK the DPRK. The butterfly away Juche-style autarky is to create another state altogether. Kim Il Sung could've ruled as an Uncle Joe clone over a rubber-stamp Politburo. His choice to create a unique and profound character cult placed NK into a completely different category of communist ideology.

I'm convinced that the Kims' haven't stormed the DMZ or requested Soviet help (until 1991) simply because periodic diplomatic temper tantrums get food aid and attention. In fact, even if Warsaw Pact intervention were offered, Mr. Kim probably would've refused it. He gained much more benefit through capital aggrandizement versus brute military force.
 
I always wondered by China, Mongolia, and North Korea didn't join the Warsaw Pact. Japan, South Korea, and the ANZACs couldn't join NATO for obvious reasons, the communist countries bordered each other.

It would have been interesting to have Chinese troops stationed in Berlin and East German troops on the demilitarized zone...

Did anyone join the WP out of free will? ;)

The WP wasn't an alliance like NATO. It was the Soviet Empire plus puppet states.
 

Cook

Banned
Given the Sino-Soviet split, China not joining the Warsaw Pact is rather obvious. There was animousity between Communist China and the Soviet Union since Stalin backed Chiang in the Civil War.


Stalin’s support for the KMT ceased with the end of World War Two, Mao owed his control of China to Stalin. It was only at Stalin’s urging that Mao sent Chinese volunteers into Korea. The Sino-Soviet split was a consequence of Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalinism. Mao could hardly agree with the denunciation and destruction of Stalin’s Cult of Personality when he had built up an identical one.

Stalin was too cagey a politican to allow North Korea into the alliance anyways being they very well could touch off a war with the West that he'd suddenly be treaty bound to fight.

Stalin gave Kim Il-Sung the go ahead to invade South Korea in the first place.

Did anyone join the WP out of free will?

Yes; Albania. And it withdrew from the Pact following the Sino-Soviet Split.

The Warsaw Pact was a purely European alliance and was in response to the re-arming of the Federal Republic of (West) Germany and its entry into NATO.
 
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Probably the best solution for this: Kim Il-Sung removed in 1956 and replaced by either Alexei Hegay (If he didn't commit suicide) or Pak Chang Ok. Both of them are part of the Soviet faction of the Worker's Party.
 

Ismail

Banned
Mongolia, is very possible. More often I wonder why it was never annexed into the Soviet Union as Tannu Tuva was. Mongolia was a SSR on all but name.
The main reason was China. Chiang Kai-shek asserted that Mongolia was a part of China. Mao recognized Mongolia as independent but at the same time the Sino-Soviet split made the prospects of incorporation quite unwise. At the same time the USSR was also wary of being seen as an expansionist state. Annexing Mongolia would have not helped that situation and would sour relations with the USA in any case. Tannu Tuva was an exceptional case since absolutely no one (except the USSR and, grudgingly, Mongolia) recognized it and the general territory had long been considered a protectorate of the Russian Empire, not to mention it had a significant Russian population.

As for the Warsaw Pact, it was concerned with Europe and was a counter to NATO. Why would the Soviets want to encourage the Americans to make a firm duplicate of it in Asia? Why would the Soviets want to coordinate both European and Asian (read: North Korean) defensive and offensive strategies simultaneously under the same plans and organization when a European battlefront would be quite different from an Asian (read: North Korean) one?
 
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What if the Chinese civil war had degenerated into a Korean split situation?

Then the USSR and USA would create NATO/WP equivalents to include their supported halves. A weaker and more USSR dependent PRC would be unable to stop Russia's influence in Korea, and if the South is admitted into this "Asian NATO" the North could follow.

Kim might still need removing though, since he was opposed to foreign influence, and hated being a satellite of either China or Russia.
 
Still, it would all collapse in 1989-90. Both Koreas reunite in 1990-91 and it's party time in Seoul!

Hold the noisemakers. When the BRD (West Germany) absorbed the former DDR in 1990-91, it faced huge infrastructure projects in the eastern states that were mostly borne by western German taxpayers. The BRD was (and still is) a very wealthy country at the economic centre of Europe. Even twenty years later, the former DDR states are nowhere near as prosperous as the western states.

At the beginning of the 1990's, South Korea was transitioning from a capitalist dictatorship (Park) to a democratic republic. True, Seoul made enormous economic leaps in the 1980's. Still, South Korea was (and arguably still is) not able to pick up the pieces if/when the Kim dynasty falls. Even if the DPRK were orthodox Stalinist rather than Juche and more prosperous, South Korea would still struggle mightily to integrate Korea in 1990.
 
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North Korea had a bad relationship with Mao's China as it is, Kim Il Sung exterminated the Korean Maoists in his rise to power and established friendly with people of whom Mao did not approve (like Tito). Joining the Warsaw Pact would result in China being overtly hostile to North Korea, as opposed to our TL where Mao and Kim exchanged a series of insults. China had differences with the Soviets from the beginning, and simply held up Stalin in order to maintain historical consistency (something far more important for Communists than ideological consistency). Mao Zedong Thought doesn't actually match with Stalinism ideologically, only in brutality and in rhetorical Trotsky bashing.
 
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