Memorandum of Conversation between Soviet Ambassador to North Korea Vasily Moskovsky and Romanian Ambassador to North Korea [M.] Bodnaras [1]

22 August 1963

On the first day of my return from vacation [I] received the Romanian ambassador, comrade Bodnaras at his request. […]

He declared that recently he had two meetings with comrade Kim Il Sung and came in order to inform me about the content of the conversations. […]

[The second] conversation [between Kim Il Sung and the Romanian] ambassador lasted 4 hours.

At the beginning of the conversation Kim Il Sung declared that he was equally upset and “insulted” by the actions of the Chinese and by the “attacks on China” on the part of the Soviet leaders.

Kim Il Sung told the Romanian ambassador that the Chinese are taking extreme measures, bordering on the severance of all relations, that he, Kim Il Sung, does not approve of their position and thinks that if the Chinese displayed cool mindedness and patience, one could avoid [these] extremes. He is concerned about these extreme Chinese measures, and at the same time he does not share the point of view of the leaders of the Soviet Union who have recently launched “vicious attacks against the Chinese party.”[…]

In the course of the conversation Kim Il Sung touched on the relations between the KWP and the CPSU. He declared that comrade [Anastas] Mikoyan's visit to the DPRK in 1956 introduced unwanted layers to these relations. The visit of comrades Mikoyan and Peng Dehuai, said Kim Il Sung, insulted the CC KWP. After this visit, some of the Soviet Koreans were shot, and he, Kim Il Sung, now regrets this. He now looks at these events with different eyes, and if he had known everything back then, he would not have allowed these events [to take place].