North Korea wins Korean War, controls all of Korea

What if North Korea won the Korean War and took over the entire Korean peninsula? Is this possible? How would the Cold War be affected by North Korea having won the Korean War? What would this alternate Korea be like(likely it would be pretty bad)? Maybe a more isolationist US is needed, but is it possible that if Kim takes all of Korea the US and allies would find it too hard to win any back? How would history be altered? What if?
 
What if North Korea won the Korean War and took over the entire Korean peninsula? Is this possible? How would the Cold War be affected by North Korea having won the Korean War? What would this alternate Korea be like(likely it would be pretty bad)? Maybe a more isolationist US is needed, but is it possible that if Kim takes all of Korea the US and allies would find it too hard to win any back? How would history be altered? What if?

A bloodier Vietnam War. Because the US is now completely serious over the "Domino Effect." They'll basically think "we can't lose another one." Because in the US's eyes, they lost China and Korea to communism.

Flip side is that the Democrats will probably maintain the White House because the Democrats lost the 1952 election BECAUSE of the Korean War (it was really unpopular after a year).

The alternate Korea would be just as paranoid and anti-west as today's North Korea. Maybe they won't go as far as developing nuclear weapons, but they'll definitely be an outcast because of their Juche system.

Having North Korea control all of South Korea is quite easy actually. Have them successfully penetrate the Pusan Defense during the opening stages of the Korean War. If they penetrated the Defense (in OTL, they came short due to supply reasons and UN reinforcements), they would've taken the final bastion in South Korea (Pusan).

To put it into perspective, this is how close the DPRK was from conquering all of Korea:

Smith-map-NKPA-gains.jpg


And yes, the Pusan Perimeter was that last line which controlled maybe 1/10 of South Korea.
 
Flip side is that the Democrats will probably maintain the White House because the Democrats lost the 1952 election BECAUSE of the Korean War (it was really unpopular after a year).

No they won't. The Republicans will trumpet that the Democrats lost both China and Korea, so they obviously can't be trusted to contain the Communist menace. Combined with going up against Eisenhower and they will be destroyed in the 1952 election.
 

ben0628

Banned
Having North Korea control all of South Korea is quite easy actually.

I wouldn't really say that. Even after the Pusan perimeter is broken, the war will still continue. At this point in time, China hasn't joined the war yet and although breaking the perimeter is possible, North Korea would lose a lot of troops and arguably wouldn't be able to hold on to South Korea when the the US counter attacks with amphibious assaults against Inchon (which was going on as the Pusan perimeter was being assaulted). Heck, I believe the reason why North Korea couldn't stop the US counter attack is because they lost too many men trying to break the Pusan perimeter.

I would also make the argument that North Korea can't win without China entering the war, and China won't enter the war unless North Korea is getting its butt kicked. Unless you adjust events pre-Korean war, North Korea can't conquer South Korea and a two state system on the peninsula is inevitable.
 
Only way to do it is to either keep the US out from the get-go or get the Red Army to intervene (and I mean intervene on a scale similar to the Chinese rather then what they sent OTL) while also still somehow keeping the fighting contained to the Korean Peninsula. Good luck with figuring out how to do either of those.
 
No they won't. The Republicans will trumpet that the Democrats lost both China and Korea, so they obviously can't be trusted to contain the Communist menace. Combined with going up against Eisenhower and they will be destroyed in the 1952 election.

It could go either way in my opinion

"We gave up Korea, but Americans won't have to go into another war!"

But yes. You are probably more correct.
 
United Korea under the North is very unlikely to look like insane hermit kingdom North Korea is today.

North Korean government, and WPK was an amalgation of numerous left-wing korean parties and Kim Il-sung and his gapsan faction was by no means largest faction in the government. Kim Moo-jung and his Yan'an faction and Pak Hyun-young and WPSK was a formidable rival for Kim Il-sung. Pro-soviet faction and Manchu faction had huge clout within the government as well. These two lost their power during the war, blamed for failure to breaktrough of Pusan perimeter and lack of uprising from WPSK that Pak promised, respectively.

Every faction except for Gapsan was purged around 1956, when Yan'an faction attempted coup against Kim Il-sung and failed. And even Gapsan was purged around 1967, putting Kim Il-sung as sole leader and without any challengers.

 Juche ideology only came around 1970s and current insanity really only begun after economic failure of late 70s and excerbated under Kim Jung-il's leadership and 'arduous march' in 90s.

United Korea will operate under collective leadership under Kim Il-sung as before but, Pak's influence will be immense. He'll have his home turf back and 'heroic' partisans operating under South Korea were his ally. There is large possibility that Pak will become leader of the United Korea sometime in 50s or 60s. He was hardcore marxist-leninist and was quite pro-Soviet. I see united korea following similar projectory of eastern communist european countries. So, probably marginally worse than current situation in retrospective.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Militarily, the NKPA didn't have the strength by the time

What if North Korea won the Korean War and took over the entire Korean peninsula? Is this possible? How would the Cold War be affected by North Korea having won the Korean War? What would this alternate Korea be like(likely it would be pretty bad)? Maybe a more isolationist US is needed, but is it possible that if Kim takes all of Korea the US and allies would find it too hard to win any back? How would history be altered? What if?

Militarily, the NKPA didn't have the strength by the time they reached 8th Army at the Pusan Perimeter; a straightleh infantry army with limited artillery and air support, very little armor, and no seapower at all, was not going to break through the lines that 8th Army could maintain - they came close in a couple of sectors, but 8th Army could and did trade space for time to bring firepower to bear.

The most likely way to get a DPRK that controls the entire peninsula is for the Soviets to get to Pusan before the US forces landed there in September, 1945 - which was three weeks after the Japanese surrender and a week after the ceremony aboard USS Missouri; the Soviets had - barely - the seapower to get troops into southern Korea before the US could, and the agreement on where to divide the two occupation zones was not final 17 August 1945. The Americans were concerned about the Soviets occupying the entire peninsula, but the situation was very fluid, planning was minimal (the focus was on Japan and the overseas Japanese garrisons), and the Soviets might have been able to present a fait accompli.

That leaves a unified, Communist Korea, without the devastation of the 1950-53 war; paradoxically, given the relative speed of the Soviet movement into Korea, in a relative sense, not that much damage was done by the Soviet invasion.

It's possible the DPRK remains a fairly stalwart Soviet ally, doesn't go as (relatively) bad as it has historically (absent the impact of the 1950-53 war and the subsequent garrison state), and there is some sort of Glasnost-like movement when the USSR dissolves. Whoever the DPRK's leadership ends up in such a situation (it may not be the Kims et al, after all) they may become something of a "Tito's Yugoslavia" type power in northeast Asia, able to play the Soviets and Chinese off against each other ...

Possible, at least. One can hope.

Best,
 
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