6 . 25전쟁 발발의 원인에 대한 재고찰 - 오인, 오식의 문제를 통한 접근 -

Abstract

There are so many works on the Korean war. In particular, a lot of scholars have paid attention to the origin and the background of the war, like Bruce Cumings' and Katherine Weathersby. It is because former Soviet documents were declassified after the collapse of the Soviet regime. These materials needed great changes in conclusion on the origin of the Korean War which were based on the US sources. According to the Soviet documents, the war was broken out due to the Soviet regime's approvement of Kim Il Sung's plan to attack South Korea. Almost of all works has focuses on the newly declassified materials both in the US and the soviet until now. In that sense, it is not possible to consider seriously perspective and historiography which could provide lessons for current security issues and crises, since researches and works on the war totally depends on sources until now. This paper tries to reinterpret sources which have been used by existing literature. At special, meetings and conversations between Stalin, Kim Il Sung and Park Heon Young in 1949 and 1950 are main materials cited in this paper. Stalin supported a war attempt by Kim Il sung in early 1950, whereas he strongly opposed that in spring, 1949. This change was, on the one hand,triggered by the nuclear test by the Soviet and the Chinese communist revolution in 1949, while his calculation that the US would not involve in any event in Asia after the Chinese revolution. In that sense, the calculation and estimate plays great role in decision of a war. The perception and calculation of a condition and a crisis is working more decisively rather than the reality itself. This argument also provides a critical reason why another total war never happened in spite of the unstable condition under the Armistice system on the Korean Peninsula. This perspective might give a solution to bother escalating a local war to a total war nowadays, too.