WI: UN doesn't support South Korea

Truman, due to his strong dislike of Syngman Rhee, may have elected to withhold American troops from Korea if it hadn't been for the Communist victory in China and the embarrassment of the Alger Hiss affair pressuring him to do something against Communism. If North Korea easily united the peninsula and didn't suffer from a siege/permanent war mentality, would there be a less dystopian DPRK today?
 
Perhaps, but if there is no communist victory in China, who helps North Korea? The Soviets?

As it was, Stalin was reluctant to give Kim Il-sung the green light to reunify Korea by force (he turned Kim down a couple of times before finally agreeing). Without the Communist victory in China, IMO he never would have agreed. First of all, it showed the reluctance of the US to intervene on the Asian mainland. Second, the existence of the PRC meant that in case reunification did not go as smoothly as Kim thought it would, Stalin could count on another country besides the USSR to help save the day for Kim. Indeed, "Korea was a perfect test case for the 'internationalism' of the new CCP regime in China. If they went along with a green light to Kim Il-sung for an attack, then they would have proven themselves revolutionaries in practice, not just in theory." https://books.google.com/books?id=3TBXDgAAQBAJ&pg=PT151

Both Kim and Rhee wanted to reunify Korea by force, but neither could do so without the support of their superpower patron. Rhee never got that support from the US (except briefly in late 1950 when the total defeat of North Korea seemed imminent) and Kim IMO would never have gotten it from the USSR without the Communist victory in China.
 
Even with CCP's victory, Stalin was afraid of US nukes. If north attacked South, soviets could risk being nuked. It was Soviet atom bomb tests which influenced it as well.
 
Is a direct border with a US ally equally worrisome to China and the USSR?

North Korea is not that distant from Beijing, comparatively speaking, while it's a rather remote area for Russia.
 
To the extent that the UN force is possible because the Soviets and the Chinese weren't in the UNSC, the easiest way to imagine this is that the Soviets don't walk out and therefore veto the motion. The question then becomes whether the U.S. is prepared to lead a military intervention outside the auspices of the UN.

Was that the point of the original post?

If the question is simply what happens if there is no intervention on behalf of the south, then the south presumably falls and Korea becomes a unified communist state. In our timeline, the north advanced as far as the Pusan perimeter even WITH the aid of the initial American and British reinforcements, i.e. they held almost the entire peninsula.
 
Well, economically speaking, the DPRK would be way better off. IOTL, the North was more prosperous than the South until, what, the 1970s? The main issue, food, wouldn't be quite as significant since most of the food in Korea was historically produced in the South. A quicker resolution to the war would mean less damage overall to the Korean peninsula, so that's factor in. Also probably wouldn't see the North invest quite as much into military nonsense since they don't have the most militarized border in the world in ATL. Though it'd probably mean more spats with Japan over islands and territorial waters. Japan would probably have a standing military the way Abe wants them to if Korea was united under communism.

Other than that? Well, I wouldn't say it'd be more prosperous than South Korea OTL since Juche's autarkic outlook is a bit at odds with...well, just general economic growth in the modern world. I'm no economist but total self-sufficiency doesn't really cut it when your country is behind technologically and lacks basic resources like food and medicine. They still have TB outbreaks over there, apparently.

On one hand, I've heard someone say that Kim Il Sung and Park Chung He were cut from the same authoritarian cloth, just Park managed to wring out more money from his patrons that Kim did and their longterm economic visions were vastly different. But I don't think North Korea under the Kim family and its cult of personality would've been able to gain as much economic prosperity, not while they place their family's rule over the good of the people. You'd probably want to get someone else, a Deng Xiaoping figure or someone more open to the world, to lead them.

In any case, it'll mean Korea's further in China's influence than OTL after the fall of the USSR (I assume that Korea unifying doesn't change the underlying factors that broke the Soviet Union). Korea probably is forced to be on good relations with China. A tributary, so to speak. That's self-isolated in technology, economics, and diplomacy. That hates Japan after being occupied... Joseon Hermit Kingdom 2.0, basically, this time with a fancier name.
 
To the extent that the UN force is possible because the Soviets and the Chinese weren't in the UNSC, the easiest way to imagine this is that the Soviets don't walk out and therefore veto the motion. The question then becomes whether the U.S. is prepared to lead a military intervention outside the auspices of the UN.

Was that the point of the original post?

Not really--at least as I read it, the original post seems to say that *Truman* (because of dislike of Rhee) might not have intervened in Korea without the Communist victory in China. (Which as I and other have noted is open to the objection that Stalin would probably never have authorized Kim Il-sung to invade the South if the Chinese Communists had not been victorious.) So instead of "WI: UN doesn't support South Korea" it could just as well have been called "WI: US doesn't support South Korea."

As for whether Truman would have sent troops without Security Council authorization, we have been through this before, and the answer is Yes. https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wi-north-wins-the-korean-war.361445/#post-11090580
 
North Korea is not that distant from Beijing, comparatively speaking, while it's a rather remote area for Russia.
Whilst it's not close to their capital or industrial areas the Korean border would only be about 80 miles away from their main naval base in the Pacific at Vladivostok, that might be rather too close for comfort in the high tension period of the 1950s if a unified Korea was a US ally.
 
Not really--at least as I read it, the original post seems to say that *Truman* (because of dislike of Rhee) might not have intervened in Korea without the Communist victory in China. (Which as I and other have noted is open to the objection that Stalin would probably never have authorized Kim Il-sung to invade the South if the Chinese Communists had not been victorious.) So instead of "WI: UN doesn't support South Korea" it could just as well have been called "WI: US doesn't support South Korea."

As for whether Truman would have sent troops without Security Council authorization, we have been through this before, and the answer is Yes. https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wi-north-wins-the-korean-war.361445/#post-11090580
If the POD is whether or not the Chinese revolution happens, we're going to have a lot more changes to worry about than just the Korean War.

If the question is about the UNSC, yes, I agree with the group consensus. In our timeline the U.S. pushed the Uniting for Peace resolution through the General Assembly specifically for this reason.
 
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