wi korean war as vietnam war

[Tyr]

ATM I'm in Korea so have been thinking about a few Korea related PODs.
One which stands out as potentially interesting is- what if the korean war was operated in a manner more akin to the Vietnam war. That is an intensive guerilla campaign the north tends not to outright get directly involved in with most of the work being done by southern leftists.

How we get to this is perhaps a bit asb. Requires a change in Kim`s grunt thinking, and given the situation on the ground a full invasion seemed to make sense. But suppose various factors transpire to make the north act more carefully.

With hindsight this would work well for them. The main socialist support was in the south and at the beginning of the korean war a lot of support was gained from uprisings. The Korean War had the effect however of killing a lot of southern communists, forcing others north and really showing the southern people what the northern regime was actually like thus cementing their support for the southern regime.

 

[Tyr]

Home now. No replies? We hardly ever see Korean War stuff...

 

[Bri2k]

Kim wanted to unify Korea and was under great pressure from Stalin and Mao to do it as quickly as possible before the U.S. could intervene. Given this, I don't think switching to a guerrilla war is in the cards.

So you not only need to change Kim's thinking, but you have to get Stalin and Mao to not be concerned about U.S. involvement. This is dicey, especially given that Mao was planning to invade Taiwan and didn't want anything to do with Korea. They were hoping a quick strike by the DPRK would have things taken care of before U.S. forces could show up.

 

[Ian Hathaway]

Kim wanted to unify Korea and was under great pressure from Stalin and Mao to do it as quickly as possible before the U.S. could intervene. Given this, I don't think switching to a guerrilla war is in the cards.

So you not only need to change Kim's thinking, but you have to get Stalin and Mao to not be concerned about U.S. involvement. This is dicey, especially given that Mao was planning to invade Taiwan and didn't want anything to do with Korea. They were hoping a quick strike by the DPRK would have things taken care of before U.S. forces could show up.

By U.S. involvement do you mean U.N. involvment? Whilst the majority of forces involved were from the U.S. there were in fact 20+ nations involved in protecting the South from invasion by North Korean and Chinese forces.

It is also doubtful that the war would have been anything but a conventional war as throughout the North and China were either on level terms in the number of troops or had more troops than the South/U.N. forces except for a short period just before China's physical involvement. (correct me if I'm wrong here as my knowledge is pretty limited although I did have two uncles who were there).

 

[Bri2k]

It was U.S. intervention that Stalin feared. I don't think he even considered the U.N. prior to the Security Council resolution.

 

[strangeland]

At any given time during the Korean War, a majority of the South Korean Army was behind the lines conducting "Internal Security" operations, in other words fighting a guerrilla war.

There was also a Communist insurgency on Jeju Island before the War: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_Uprising

...and numerous North Korean attempts to infiltrate agents or start a guerrilla war in the 60s and 70s.

 

[Tyr]

Kim wanted to unify Korea and was under great pressure from Stalin and Mao to do it as quickly as possible before the U.S. could intervene. Given this, I don't think switching to a guerrilla war is in the cards.

So you not only need to change Kim's thinking, but you have to get Stalin and Mao to not be concerned about U.S. involvement. This is dicey, especially given that Mao was planning to invade Taiwan and didn't want anything to do with Korea. They were hoping a quick strike by the DPRK would have things taken care of before U.S. forces could show up.

It was Kim who wanted to attack the South, Stalin was the one who made him wait as he was worried about getting into a conflict with America whilst they were the only one with nuclear weapons.

When it came down to the war they were hoping they could win it before foreign intervention arrived. If the war was just a native insurgancy then its not so certain there would be foreign intervention.