The campaign against "collaborators" was attributed to political and ideological manipulations by the U.S.; the high-ranking leader Pak Chang-ok said that the American enemy had "started to use a new method, namely, it donned a leftist garb, which considerably influenced the inexperienced cadres of the Party and government organs."Balázs Szalontai. "Captives of the Past: The Questions of Responsibility and Reconciliation in North Korea's Narratives of the Korean War", Inherited Responsibility and Historical Reconciliation in East Asian Context, Jun-Hyeok Kwak and Melissa Nobles, eds., London: Routledge, 2013, pp. 165–82. Kathryn Weathersby's Soviet Aims in Korea and the Origins of the Korean War, 1945–1950: New Evidence from Russian Archives (1993) confirmed that the Korean War was launched by order of Kim Il Sung (1912–1994); and also refuted the DPRK's allegations of biological warfare in the Korean War. The Korean Central News Agency dismissed the historical record of Soviet documents as "sheer forgery".Korean Central News Agency, 19 January 1998.
The campaign against "collaborators" was attributed to political and ideological manipulations by the U.S.; the high-ranking leader Pak Chang-ok said that the American enemy had "started to use a new method, namely, it donned a leftist garb, which considerably influenced the inexperienced cadres of the Party and government organs."Balázs Szalontai. "Captives of the Past: The Questions of Responsibility and Reconciliation in North Korea's Narratives of the Korean War", Inherited Responsibility and Historical Reconciliation in East Asian Context, Jun-Hyeok Kwak and Melissa Nobles, eds., London Routledge, 2013, pp. 165–82. Kathryn Weathersby's Soviet Aims in Korea and the Origins of the Korean War, 1945–1950: New Evidence from Russian Archives (1993) confirmed that the Korean War was launched by order of Kim Il Sung (1912–1994); and also refuted the DPRK's allegations of biological warfare in the Korean War. The Korean Central News Agency dismissed the historical record of Soviet documents as "sheer forgery".Korean Central News Agency, 19 January 1998.