Were Mao or Stalin involved in the Korean War?

Factual Questions
1

OK, the Chinese did come in after the North Koreans had been pushed out of the South, but what was going on before the war?

Are we aware now of any agreements that Kim might have had with his neighbors in which they would have offered assistance if the evil Western forces came to the aid of the South? I seem to recall some historian speculating that Stalin had maybe hoodwinked Kim, having him think that the Soviets would come in to assist, then not following through.

I’m more or less familiar with what happened once the war started, but am curious about anything that might have come to light since then about pre-war political machinations.

2

IIRC China intervened by sending “volunteers”. Seeing how the US had supported the Kuomintang all along you can understand they were not exactly happy to see the US living next door.

3

Stalin was very involved in the Korean war, sending Russian pilots during it and urging the North to attack the South in several meetings in Moscow.

These meetings are well documented. I recomend John Gaddis’ “We Now Know” for a quick summary of the pre-war meetings.

4

I read a historical essay a while ago that stated Stalin had actively assisted N. Korea with weapons and military advisers, and gave the final go-ahead to the invasion of the South. However, it was said, he only did this because he believed the United States would NOT intervene.

5

There was a pretty good dissection of the Reluctant Dragon theory a while back in MHQ magazine. That theory, of course, is that poor Mao was forced to attack MacArthur when his forces closed on the Yalu River.

Modern documentation is beginning to belie that theory. The bottom line is that with the release of Soviet documents it is becoming increasingly evident that the historians of the 1950s were the correct ones: that there was a coordinated, conspiratorial effort on the part of Mao, Stalin, and Kim Il Sung to invest South Korea and remove the American presence entirely from that part of Asia.

However, the author of that article wryly notes that “the flawed Reluctant Dragon version of the Korean War will likely persist for some time” because the new information has been slow in finding its way into popular history books. The Reluctant Dragon theory is apparently a very popular one, and will probably be supported by some in this very thread, should it devolve into debate rather than a discussion of the available scholarship.