Korean War

(1950–1953)

   According to Soviet-era documents, the MGB played an important role in the creation of the communist regime in North Korea. MGB officers helped established a North Korean security service. Moscow even provided film of the execution of Polish officers at Katyn as a training aid for their new ally. During the Korean War, the MGB assigned intelligence and counterintelligence officers to the Soviet military units assigned to fight alongside the North Korean and Chinese forces. Joseph Stalin sent fighter wings and antiaircraft regiments to bolster the war effort. MGB intelligence officers recruited at least one important source, George Blake, from among the soldiers and diplomats captured by the North Koreans and Chinese forces. The MGB and the GRU also collected military intelligence from the battlefront. American jet aircraft, shot down in the sky above Korea, were examined and in some cases shipped to the Soviet Union. Captured American jet fighter pilots were apparently interrogated by MGB officers. There is some evidence that a few of these pilots were transported to Soviet prison camps, where they were never heard from again.

   A major MGB effort in the war was a massive peace campaign, which it fashioned under the direction of the Communist Party leadership. This active measure was designed to paint the United States as the aggressor in Korea, and it was largely successful. More than a billion people—most of them living in the Soviet bloc—signed petitions denouncing the United States for its use of biological weapons. Stalin received MGB and GRU reporting about the course of the war. Apparently, he ignored much of the information dealing with the human cost of the struggle, insisting that the war continue regardless of the costs to his Chinese and Korean allies. Stalin insisted that the Chinese and North Koreans reject United Nations offers that allowed disaffected prisoners to stay with the side that captured them. As in the aftermath of World War II when he demanded the return of Soviet citizens and prisoners of war in Allied hands, Stalin insisted that these prisoners would be used as agents against the communist world.