In the summer of 1949, at the request of North Korea, China sent three Korean divisions to Korea one after another. The first to return home were the 164th Division, the 166th Division, and the last to return home was the 156th Division, which was still fighting in the south at the time, and this unit did not return to Korea until 1950. The combat effectiveness of these three Korean divisions in Siye may not be ranked, but in the Korean People's Army, they are the absolute main force, especially when the main force of the Korean People's Army was divided behind the enemy lines after the Inchon landing, and these three units showed strong combat effectiveness.
The reason why the PLA has so many North Korean cadres must start from the long-standing relationship between North Korea and China. In history, every time Korea was invaded by foreign enemies, China sent troops to support it, and this historical tradition continued from the Tang Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, and after the founding of New China, it also carried out a vigorous War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.
At the end of the Sino-Japanese War, the Qing army was defeated, leading to the Japanese occupation of Korea and Taiwan. However, the Korean people never gave up their resistance, and at that time, China was also reduced to a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, and many Koreans ran to China, hoping that China would complete the democratic revolution and help Korea recover after independence. In the Whampoa Military Academy, there were Koreans, and later after the split between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, some Koreans followed the Kuomintang, and some Koreans followed the Communist Party.
Wu Ting, one of the founders of the PLA artillery, was Korean and participated in the Red Army's Long March. In November 1945, Wu Ting led a part of the Koreans to Korea, but most of them remained in the northeast and were incorporated into the Northeast Democratic United Army, which later became the Northeast Field Army, the Fourth Field Army.
The North Korean troops that remained in the northeast were reorganized into three detachments, the first, the third, and the fifth. The commander of the first detachment of the Korean Volunteer Army was Kim Woong of the New Fourth Army, and the political commissar Fang Hushan. At the time of the Tonghua Incident in 1946, this force was the main force in suppressing the rebels. Later, with Li Hongguang's detachment as the main body, the Fourth Division was formed. After the Liaoshen Campaign, this unit was reorganized into the 166th Division of the Fourth Field Army of the People's Liberation Army, which served as a garrison in Shenyang.
Soon after the formation of the third detachment, it was reorganized into a unit directly under the Matsue Military Region and served as a guard. At that time, the leaders of Siye generally liked to use North Korean troops as guards, because the loyalty of North Korean troops was notorious, and at the time of the Tonghua Incident, the Korean Volunteer Army led by Fang Hushan was the only unit that had not been countered by Kuomintang agents. In 1949, this unit was reorganized into the 491st Regiment of the 164th Division of Shiye and served as a garrison in Changchun.
The fifth detachment is not well-known, but it is the most effective of the North Korean troops. The force was formed by Park Il-woo, who later served as North Korea's deputy prime minister. In November 1948, this unit was reorganized into the 156th Division of Shino, and also participated in the Battle of Montenegro, and later in the Battle of Pingjin and the Battle of Crossing the River.
Many people say that these three divisions were formed by Ethnic Koreans in China, but in fact, they are not, and the concept of Korean nationality was only established after the founding of New China. The senior generals of the three Korean divisions all fled from Korea to China when they were young, and they were All Koreans from beginning to end.
In fact, during the War of Liberation, North Korea's assistance to China was very large. At the beginning of the Liberation War, North Korea's supreme leader Kim Il Sung said that he would devote all his strength to aiding North Korea, and he also called on the young people of North Korea to join the Northeast Field Army as volunteer provinces, otherwise the three Korean divisions at that time would not be full and had such a huge scale. However, when they were about to return to China later, the officers and men of the three Korean divisions were unwilling to return to China, and it was still the Siye faction that persuaded them to finally agree to return to China.
In addition to the assistance of personnel, North Korea also gave huge material assistance at that time. In March 1946, when commander Jiang Xintai and political commissar Tang Tianji wrote to Pyongyang to ask for help from Korea, Comrade Kim Il Sung generously agreed, not only providing 10,000 sets of fine cloth that could make 10,000 sets of military uniforms, but also 1,000 sets of ready-made military uniforms and a cart of wagons of medicines, which was a considerable amount at the time.
At the beginning of the Liberation War, Chen Yun and Xiao Jinguang went to Korea to ask for weapons assistance from North Korea, and Kim Il Sung decided to call on the people of the whole country to collect weapons left over from the Japanese occupation. In just one month, it provided 100,000 pieces of weapons and equipment and a large amount of ammunition and military supplies to the Northeast Field Army, and finally assigned Jiang Sanghao, head of the Central Guard Regiment of the DPRK, to personally escort and transport them to China.
The northeast has rich resources, and these resources are also fully utilized by the northeast military region. Since 1947, China Resources has leased several large freighters from the Soviet Union and docked at the ports of North Korea, china resources company transported soybeans and grain from the northeast to Hong Kong to sell, immediately purchased the medicines, electronic devices and other materials urgently needed by the Northeast Field Army, and then transported them to North Korea, detoured from North Korea and shipped to the Northeast Field Army.
According to Zhu Lizhi, chief representative of the Northeast Bureau of the CPC Central Committee in Pyongyang, in his "Summary of Diplomatic Work with the DPRK in the Past Two Years and Future Tasks" written to the CPC Central Committee, the comprehensive statistics of the DPRK's support for northeast China's materials were as follows: "In coordination with the comrades from the headquarters and South Manchuria to obtain and purchase combat materials from North Korea, more than 2,000 wagons of weapons and ammunition were obtained from North Korea. ”
In the early days of the Liberation War, the Kuomintang army cut off the road assistance of the People's Liberation Army and the guanwai troops, and many cadres and officers and soldiers also detoured from Korea into the northeast. In 1946, Pan Shuoduan, commander of the 184th Division of the 60th Army of the Kuomintang Army, led an uprising, and Chiang Kai-shek was very angry when he learned of this, and sent heavy troops to encircle and suppress it, and this unit also entered Korea to avoid the encirclement and suppression of the Kuomintang army.
In 1946, the Kuomintang army launched an attack on important cities such as Dandong and Tonghua controlled by our army, and in order to reduce losses, logistics units and schools and wounded soldiers all entered Korea to hide, and the North Korean side sent a large number of personnel to help carry supplies. On the evening of May 6, 1947, 1,400 cadres and fighters from the Dalian Tank School and the Police Academy, under the leadership of Deputy Political Commissar Li Rongcai, landed at nampo Port in North Korea by boat, passed through Pyongyang, North Korea, and on May 29, arrived at the Tumen River port town of Namyang, the town of Tumen, and then entered Tumen, China, and finally arrived in Harbin, the headquarters of the Democratic Coalition Army.
Throughout the Liberation War, North Korea's aid to China was enormous, but this history has been little known. In fact, such things have happened a lot in history, there are many historical events in which the two countries help each other, and the relationship between the two countries whose blood is thicker than water does not stop at propaganda, in the long river of history of the past thousand years, the friendship between the two sides has long been firmly tied together.