Supposedly, after he had made vague insinuations for months that he wouldn't bail Kim-Il-Sung out of the mess he had created for himself, for a brief period in October 1950, after Stalin had announced that Soviet troops would not be fighting in Korea, Mao "instructed" Kim to simply withdraw to the Tumen and regroup the KPA in Manchuria as a guerrilla force, abandoning Korea to MacArthur. Of course, Mao immediately reversed course, and launched a full-scale military intervention to prop Kim up. But what if, somehow, Mao is persuaded to stick to this line, and not intervene in Korea?