Former Enemy Offers a Rare, Insider’s Look at the Korean War : History: Chun Sang Chin, who was a general in the North Korean army, tells of the Soviet Union’s leading role in the plan to capture Seoul.

Four decades ago Chun Sang Chin was a brigadier general in the Communist North Korean army, engaged in the bloody business of killing thousands of American, South Korean and United Nations soldiers.

Wednesday morning, that same Chun Sang Chin was standing in the warm sunshine in San Pedro, espousing the cause of peace, denouncing what he called “the lies of communism” and complaining about the L.A. traffic.

“This is something I never dreamed of in my life,” Chun, 73, said through an interpreter at a press conference aboard the freighter Lane Victory in Los Angeles Harbor. Like so many people whose lives were defined by the hatreds and hostilities of the Cold War, Chun, a gray-haired man in a gray suit, seemed slightly mystified by the events of the past few years, surprised at suddenly finding himself in what was once an enemy nation.

“In the old Soviet Union, you didn’t hear anything but bad things about America,” Chun said. “However, we now know that what we have been told in the past were complete lies.

“My participation in the Korean War will remain a black spot in my personal history,” Chun said. But he added that, “We are fated under God to live and let live, to forgive and forget. I pray that you will join me in praying for world peace.”

Chun wasn’t the only person at the press conference who seemed surprised by the turn of events in the world since the Korean War.

“It’s very strange to see him,” said Edward Borcherdt , a Los Angeles businessman who served as a Marine lieutenant in Korea. “I never thought I’d see the day when I’d shake hands with a North Korean general.”

The occasion was a visit to Southern California by Chun and two other former North Korean generals, all of whom have spent the past 30 years or so living in the former Soviet Union. They were brought to the United States by the Assn. of Retired Korean Generals and Admirals, a group of former South Korean military men now living in Southern California.

The two other former generals, Lt. Gen. Kang Sang Ho, 83, and Lt. Gen. Yoo Sang Chul, 73, were reportedly exhausted from traveling and did not attend the press conference. About 50 people, many of them members of the Los Angeles Korean community, attended the press conference aboard the old Victory ship, which during the Korean War brought 7,000 North Korean refugees to freedom in the south.

The purpose of the former generals’ visit was to meet with academics from USC, Stanford and other institutions to discuss the origins of the Korean War, particularly the role of the former Soviet Union in precipitating the conflict. The war began when North Korean forces crossed the 38th Parallel and invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950. About 54,000 Americans were killed and 105,000 were wounded in the conflict before an armistice was signed in 1953; more than 400,000 South Korean soldiers also were killed, and about 1 1/2 million North Koreans and Chinese.

Born in eastern Russia of Korean parents in 1918, Chun was a member of the Soviet Marine Corps in World War II, and he helped free Korea from Japanese occupation forces in the closing days of the war. Like many Soviet-born Koreans, he became an official in the North Korean Communist Party after the war, serving as director of education in Wonsan, North Korea, and later as chairman of the Russian literature department at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang. At the start of the Korean War he became a “senior colonel”--the equivalent of a U.S. brigadier general--and served as deputy director of ordnance for the National Defense Ministry.

After the Korean armistice Chun, like the two other former generals visiting Los Angeles, was purged by North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung and went into exile in the Soviet Union, where he became editor of a Korean language newspaper in Alma Ata, Kazakhstan.

Since the breakup of the former Soviet Union, Chun and the other generals finally felt free to publicly discuss their personal knowledge about the origins of the Korean War.

Although Western historians have long known that Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin at least acquiesced in the North Korean invasion, Chun said that Soviet military planners actually formulated the operational plans for capturing the South Korean capital of Seoul. In fact, Chun said, the plans had to be translated from Russian to Korean before being disseminated among North Korean military leaders.

According to Roger Dingman, a USC history professor who helped organize a seminar with the three generals earlier this month and who is writing a book about the Korean War, the former generals were in a unique position to provide hitherto undisclosed details about those events.

“They (the generals) confirmed that the Soviets wrote the operational orders for the North Korean army to go into South Korea, which the North Koreans have denied for 40 years,” Dingman said in a telephone interview.

Dingman added that the plan only extended to the capture of Seoul, which the North Koreans accomplished in a few days. The North Koreans expected that this would end the war, and were surprised when the Americans and the United Nations refused to allow South Korea to fall permanently into North Korean hands.

According to Yohng Sohk Choe, who helped arrange the visit, the generals will visit Chicago, Houston, Dallas, New York and Washington before returning to their homes in the former Soviet Union.

Asked after the press conference about his impressions of Los Angeles, Chun replied: “One impression I get is that in this country you don’t walk, you drive. Legs are not necessary here.”