Han Hongkoo. Wounded Nationalism: The Minsaengdan Incident and Kim Il Sung in Eastern Manchuria

University of Washington, 1999. — 402 p.The Minsaengdan Incident: In the early 1930s, Korean and Chinese communists were allied against Imperial Japan, which was in the process of invading Manchuria. At the time, the border between the two countries was rather amorphous, which meant that Chinese and Korean communists were dispersed in northeastern China and what is now North Korea. Japan, conscious of the nationalistic leanings of the Koreans, tried to divide the two communist groups by offering autonomy from the Chinese in return for supporting Japan. As the Imperial Japanese Army steadily took control of the Korean Peninsula, they became less interested in Korean nationalism. However, Chinese communists became convinced that Korean communists were traitors and could not be trusted. Chinese Communist Party (CPC) leaders in the area implemented a vicious purge, summarily executing somewhere between 500 and 2,000 Korean Communist Party (KPC) members. Kim Il-sung narrowly missed the fate of his fellow communist members; the CPC’s selection criteria for punishment appeared to be mostly driven by ethnicity. The young Kim Il-sung had to have been shaken by these events and it would not be a huge stretch to suggest that the Minsaengdan Incident fostered a mistrust of Chinese motives.