Mao's View on Kim

In 1956, Mao Zedong was so angry with Kim Il Sung that he told Moscow he might use the 400,000 Chinese troops still in North Korea to “help Kim Il-sung correct his mistakes,” a thinly veiled proposal to depose him. However, Mao later came to regard Kim as a loyal son, to the point of promising him that if the United States attacked the North, Kim could use China’s northeastern provinces as a rear area under his own command.