The end of the Cold War has not done much to reduce the long-simmering hostility between North and South Korea, but it has indirectly shed a great deal of light on the brutal war they fought nearly 50 years ago--and on the behavior of North Korea's leaders during the conflict-ridden years since.

As long as the Soviet Union existed, Moscow and its allies in the war effort, North Korea and China, maintained a united front of secrecy about the conflict, closely adhering to their early declarations about its causes and origins. Over the years, historians learned much about the South Korean-United Nations side of the war, but some of the most basic questions about the conflict remained unanswerable. Now, with the post-Cold War opening of important archives in the former Soviet Union and China, scholars are dramatically rewriting the history of the war.

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