WI: China never enters the Korean War?

In 1950, in the early onset of the Korean War, what if China, and to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union, never enters the Korean War on the side of North Korea, leaving it alone to fight against South Korea and the United Nations?
 
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Blair152

Banned
In 1950, in the early onset of the Korean War, what if the China, and to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union, never enters the Korean War on the side of North Korea, leaving it alone to fight against South Korea and the United Nations?
That would depend on three things, 1, the Soviet Union not walking out of
the UN Security Council meeting, because if the Soviet Union hadn't walked out, it would have vetoed the resolution to send troops, 2, North Korea breaking through the Pusan Pocket, and three, the Inchon landings going horribly wrong.
 
The DPRK only attacked the ROK on explicit promise of support from Stalin. Rather moot point, I would say - the North Korean army was a peasant militia pre-Red Army warehouse transfers.

EDIT: to clarify: The KPA's arms were ENTIRELY Soviet-made. Mosin-Nagants, PPSh-41s, T-34s, Katyushas...they were all shipped in from Red Army stockpiles. The MiG-15s were piloted by Red Air Force pilots. Their supply dumps were on Russian and later Chinese soil. Without explicit support from Stalin and Mao, there would have been no Korean War.
 
Thedecision would have been possible, but it would mean the total defeat of Kim Il Sung. Given the near-paranoid view of the west then taken in both Moscow and Beijing, it is hard to see what could motivate it.
 
Is it plausible that as a POD, threats of nuclear warfare from the United States (as did happen in OTL) could've forced the USSR and/or China to back down?
 
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Is it plausible that as a POD, threats of nuclear warfare from the United States (as did happen in OTL) could've forced the USSR and/or China to back down?

I doubt it. Doing that would have established the precedent that US nuclear weapons can be used to make the Soviets do what Washington wants. If you phrase it that way, Stalin almost has to excalate.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
This is actually quite easy to bring about. All that has to happen is for the UN (i.e. 8th Army) unit's to stop at the 50 mile demarkation line delared by Mao. There may well have been a chance to get the line moved to 50 KM with a bit of back channel discussion. War is over before Christmas 1950 (actually, war is over before Thanksgiving).

MAo didn't really WANT to engage the West. He was, however, justifiably worred about the Western forces rolling right into China, hence the 50 mile buffer he tried to impose.
 
well, if we assume that China doesn't get involved but MacArthur is still in charge, then won't that mean that NK gets completely conquered? Hard to see Mao just letting that happen. OTOH, if the allies simply stopped somewhere on a line set roughly on the 40th Parallel (an idea I've often proposed on here) and annexed everything south of that to SK, and left everything north of it as a rump NK, then China has little reason to get involved. This smaller NK would be horribly unviable, unable to feed itself and likely soaking up a huge amount of aid from the USSR and China....
 

Blair152

Banned
This is actually quite easy to bring about. All that has to happen is for the UN (i.e. 8th Army) unit's to stop at the 50 mile demarkation line delared by Mao. There may well have been a chance to get the line moved to 50 KM with a bit of back channel discussion. War is over before Christmas 1950 (actually, war is over before Thanksgiving).

MAo didn't really WANT to engage the West. He was, however, justifiably worred about the Western forces rolling right into China, hence the 50 mile buffer he tried to impose.
It would also require the Soviets to veto the resolution that called for the UN
to send troops in the first the place. The Soviet Union had walked out of the
Security Council about two days before the vote and didn't return, as I said before.
 

Blair152

Banned
well, if we assume that China doesn't get involved but MacArthur is still in charge, then won't that mean that NK gets completely conquered? Hard to see Mao just letting that happen. OTOH, if the allies simply stopped somewhere on a line set roughly on the 40th Parallel (an idea I've often proposed on here) and annexed everything south of that to SK, and left everything north of it as a rump NK, then China has little reason to get involved. This smaller NK would be horribly unviable, unable to feed itself and likely soaking up a huge amount of aid from the USSR and China....
The line of demarcation between North and South Korea is actually the 38th
Parallel. It runs through the building where the UN and North Koreans meet to hold peace talks since 1952.
 
The line of demarcation between North and South Korea is actually the 38th
Parallel. It runs through the building where the UN and North Koreans meet to hold peace talks since 1952.

I believe he meant to say 40th for the sake of his argument. The demarcation line between the DPRK and ROK used to be exactly conformant to the 38th parallel pre-war, but it is not anymore.

See the image below for comparison.

Korean_war_1950-1953.gif
 

nbcman

Donor
The line of demarcation between North and South Korea is actually the 38th
Parallel. It runs through the building where the UN and North Koreans meet to hold peace talks since 1952.

I think that Dave Howery was proposing a line to the north of the 38th parallel which is slightly to the north of the narrow waist of NK as a stop point. It would respect (for the most part) Mao's wish for the UN forces to stop short of the NK-PRC border while annexing a substantial portion of NK.
 
It would also require the Soviets to veto the resolution that called for the UN to send troops in the first the place. The Soviet Union had walked out of the Security Council about two days before the vote and didn't return, as I said before.
That is really not relevant to the matter being discussed.
 
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