This is CBS I on the World with John Bachelor.

Here's John Bachelor.

North Korea and Russia.

Today, here in the 21st century, requires a little history.

Once upon a time, Kimel-Sung, the man who inherited North Korea from the chaos of the end of the Second

War and the withdrawal flight of the Imperial Japanese Army that had dominated the Korean Peninsula

for most of the century at that point 1945. Kim Il-Song took over a shattered economy,

north and south. Many years later, Kim El-Sung wanted to unite the Korean

Peninsula. This is the grandfather of Kim Jong-un, the present dictator, the Kim family.

He applied to, through representatives of the then

Soviet Union, now Russia, he applied to the representative in Pyongyang to ask

Marshall Stalin for weapons and support for reuniting the

Korean Peninsula. The report is in a new book Friday Nick Bunker in the Shadow of Fear, the period 49 to 50. Stalin said no

absolutely not. You're not going to cause problems for me. I have other ambitions.

The ambitions were the People's Republic of China because Mao was then in

Moscow and looking for a sino-Soviet treaty. Some weeks went by and in the United States, Dean Achison, then the Secretary of State, very powerful

man, very well prepared for Harry Truman who had inherited the presidency from the deceased FDR.

Dean Acheson gave a speech at the press club in Washington and in it he presented the

American sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific.

All eyes were on Europe, of course, because of the Marshall Plan, and there was a NATO treaty that

wasn't staffed or armed yet, but a treaty did exist. In the Indo-Pacific it was another matter.

And Dean Hatchetson, who had not been to Asia, and didn't know Asia, had hired Columbia professors and other executives to help him with these stories.

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