This is a 'chicken or egg' question.
Two little kids (Gen. Kim Ilsung and Dr. Rhee Syngman) started throwing punches and yelling dirty words at each other. They got madder and madder and their punches got harder and harder. Eventually, Kim got really mad and knocked down Rhee.
Rhee's Uncle Sam (Gen. Douglas McArthur) rushed over and punched out Kim. Now, Kim's Uncle (Chairman Mao) came over and kicked Uncle Sam very hard. Sam and Mao pushed and shoved for a while and then decided it was not their fight and called it quit.
Kim and Rhee, now up on their feet, wanted the fight to go on, but the big boys hushed them up.
An old man came along and asked the boys - 'Who started the fight?' Kim pointed at Rhee and Rhee pointed at Kim. The old man looked things over and decided that both boys were equally guilty of starting the fight.
The wise old man said:
'When two whales fight, millions of shrimps die.'
Technically speaking, N Korea crossed the 38th and invaded S Korea en mass on June 25, 1950 and thus started the Korean War. Prior to this date, N Korea had an active guerrilla war in S Korea. Both North and South engaged in small scale (battalion or sm aller units) border clashes which had the bulk of the S Korean troops tied up along the border.
It is not clear why Kim Il Sung did not continue his G-war which might have succeeded in toppling Rhee's government. It is not likely that US would have intervened in covert warfare. Kim became impatient and gambled - and lost big.
On the other hand, the Rhee invaded N Korea, with MacArthur's tacit approval or direct command, in spite of repeated Chinese warnings. MacArthur was more interested in promoting war (and his fame) than the welfare of the Korean people. It was a tragic mi stake for Pres. Truman to allow MacArthur's vanity to dictate the course of the war.
It is true that Truman sacked the general later on, but the damage had already been done. The Chinese came in as they had promised and the War stopped more or less along the 38th parallel. Millions of people died and the whole of North Korea was devastated.
Kim Il Sung is guilty of invading S Korea and Rhee Syngman is guilty of invading N Korea. Both men are dead now. Should they be judged as war criminals who destroyed Korea? One should not blame one without blaming the other as well.
The root cause of the war
In 1945, we Koreans mistakenly believed that Japan's surrender meant independence at last. Little they knew that US was planning to impose a 40+ year trusteeship for Korea. US officials in charge of the Korean policy had no knowledge of the Korean histo ry or any interest in the Korean people. It is ironic that Dean Rusk, one of the policy makers, would go on to formulate the disastrous US policy for Vietnam.In Vietnam, there was a cohesive united front led by Ho Chi Min and a sizable military force. In contrast, Korean resistance was hopelessly fractured and scattered in small bands in China, USSR and USA. There was no Uncle Ho or a credible fighting force i n Korea.
Some people say that Syngman Rhee had sold out the Republic to US, but in reality, the fate of Korea was in the hands of foreigners and no Korean leader had any say on the matter. Dr. Rhee, pretending to cooperate with US, outfoxed the Americans and ended the US occupation (after 2 years instead of 40-50 years!). The same goes to Gen. Kim Il Sung. Neither man had the stature to influence Stalin or US. By working with the foreign powers, they were able to salvage some semblance of nationhood in Koreas.
Gen. Kim's preoccupation with self reliance (Ju Che) had its origin in the humiliating treatments he had received from Soviet commanders in Korea and Stalin's underlings. Stalin treated Gen. Kim as a Soviet Army major - not as a peer leader of a nation. To US, Gen. Kim was a Russian army captain pretending to be the legendary Korean patriot Kim Il Sung. US treatments of Dr. Rhee were no better. Indeed. US has tried to eliminate him on a number of occasions for not following American orders!
Both men had done their best for Korea. It is not likely that Korea would have fared any better under other leaders. At any rate both men were true Korean patriots. It is time to move on toward reconciliation and reunification.
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