When it came to China deciding to support North Korea, they made this choice because of the shared hatred for the enemy of North Korea (Yufan, Zhihai 94). In addition, this decision by China, also stems back to 1949 when Chairman Mao delivered a speech exclaiming how he is denouncing the United States as an imperialistic power seeking to dominate China, and with that he said China would now lean toward the side of the Soviet Union (Yufan, Zhihai 97). The Chinese Communist party did not want any more possibilities of United States ideals spreading into China, thus the reason for the Chinese leaning toward the Soviets.
With that said, the Soviets joining North Korea is what made the Chinese join North Korea as well. In the aid of North Korea, China had sent many troops in to fight on behalf of the North Koreans. Also, because of the comradely help from both China and the Soviet Union, North Korea was able to have ten army divisions (Chang 34). In addition, the alliance of China also bolstered their aircraft numbers drastically as they had about 200 aircrafts available for the battle at any time (Chang 34).
Despite the great deal of confidence the North Koreans had in the United States not being a factor, they were eventually proved to be wrong in their thinking, thus underestimating South Koreas strength as a whole in regards to their allies. The United States actually ended up getting involved in the conflict quickly and swiftly (Chang 38). The United States presence in the war certainly made a drastic presence as it quickly caused the Korean War to come to a conclusion about one year after the mark of it.
This decision was due to the Communist not being able to have a quick victory like they originally intended to have like they had planned. The duration of the war was agreed upon everyone agreeing to a cease fire like an honorable armistice. Because of this, this left the issue facing the Korea to the only two things that could help in this matter, which was time and future (Chang 38). Instead of having one winner as a result of the war, there were instead two winners. It is important to mention that the ending such as this, untimely was the building blocks for the tension that occurs in North and South Korea today.
In the next and final phase of the paper, evidence is be linked to the theories discussed earlier in the paper backing up whether or not they were indeed effective and true. Moving on to the last part of the research paper, it is now time to explain how the theories chosen above worked or did not work. Starting off, the misperception theory will be discussed on whether or not the theory is supported by the evidence. According to the material listed in the historical summary part of the essay, the theory of misperception was indeed deemed to be true.
The evidence in the historical evidence that supports this was the part where it said North Korea thought they were stronger in overall strength compared to South Korea. The misperception here was the fact that the United States ended up joining the conflict on behalf of the South Koreans. That is what the misperception was, as the North Koreas believed the United States was not going to intervene thus the misperception in thinking they were stronger than South Korea as a whole. Despite the history between South Korea and the United States, North Korea basically ignored that relationship to see what they wanted to see.
A term to describe this is “motivated misperception”. As already mentioned, motivated misperception is where a country sees what they want to see when they are in pursuit of something. So in this case, the motivated misperception came about when The North Koreas ignored the presence of the United States and used strong reasoning on why they wouldn’t join to the Soviet Union because of how bad they wanted to attack South Korea. They were in the mindset of saying anything to get the Soviet Union on board with their plan.
The implications for this theory are the misperceptions made by North Korea in downplaying South Koreas overall strength in terms of military strength, and alliance help. For the alliance theory, the evidence that supports this theory in the historical summary is the pledging of the Soviet Union and China to being on the North Koreas side in the conflict. This goes along with the statistical study from earlier in the paper when it mentioned the attacking countries are more ely to launch an attack or military conflict on a target country when the attacking country has at least one of more allies.
In this case, North Korea had not one, but two allies that were in support of them. Because of that, it really gave North Korea the mindset and thinking that a war with South Korea would be easy and quick. The implication and determining factor that makes this theory legitimate is the alliance formation of the Soviet Union and China with the North Koreans. With all of this said, the facts presented in the historical summary supports both the alliance aggression theory and the misperception theory thus making the theories legitimate and proving that the theories are indeed accurate and not just a hypothesis.
Before wrapping up the paper in the conclusion paragraph, some pros and cons of both of the alliance aggression theory and misperception theory will be discussed. First, one pro of the alliance aggression theory is the hypotheses that were laid out in the theory by Leeds. This really provides a good understanding of the theory in terms of what factors into the legitimacy of the theory. A con of the alliance aggression theory in my opinion is that it is sort of vague.
It does not explain what would happen if both the aggressor and defender had allies, instead it only shows what happens when one of them has allies on their sides. For the misperception theory, the pro that comes to my mind, is the exceptional job on illustrating and providing historical examples in aiding in the determination of the legitimacy of the theory. As far as cons for the misperception theory go, I cannot think of any cons that can be associated with the theory. In conclusion, both the alliance aggression theory and misperception theory were proven to be right.
This is due to the data that was in my historical summary portion of the paper matching up to the terms of the theories. Before the theories had just started out as a hypothesis, but by the end of the paper, the theories have proven to be true, thus being legitimate theories and making them a legitimate cause of war. It is important to test theories on real life cases to test how effective they actually indeed are. Lastly, as said before alliance aggression theory and the misperception theory are legitimate theories in the cause of war happening and in countries attacking other countries.
