Interpersonal Leader Relationship in Sino-North Korea Relations

This paper examines how personal ties between Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung, and their political elite shaped the formation and durability of Sino–North Korean relations between 1950 and 1960. It argues that the alliance persisted not only because of shared security interests and Chinese material support, but because repeated face-to-face encounters and a shared revolutionary identity generated bonded trust between the two leaders. Through structured textual analysis of memoirs, diplomatic records, party documents, and published archival sources, the paper traces how personalized authority allowed leader-level interactions to influence alliance management. The analysis shows that during episodes of conflict over military command, sovereignty, reconstruction, and party purges, Mao and Kim relied on reassurance, apology, and revolutionary language to prevent disputes from escalating. By highlighting the interpersonal dimension of alliance politics, the paper challenges purely structural accounts of Sino–North Korean relations and demonstrates that trust-building at the leadership level was a crucial mechanism sustaining the alliance.