Interesting theory. And does fit the facts.

I just finished a book on the history of political developments in the North Pacific, "Let The Sea Make A Noise", by Walter A. McDougall. Fascinating. His 'take' on the Korean War is this:

Acheson had given a speech with indicated Korea lie outside the US sphere of interest. "So far as the military security of other areas in the Pacific is concerned, it must be clear that no person can guarantee these areas against military attack.....Should such an attack occur....the initial reliance must be on the people attacked to resist it and then upon the commitments of the entire civilized world under the Charter of the United Nations." (P. 681) Some people in the US thought he had done so in the hopes of starting a conflict with the USSR.

According to him, Korea was more of a client state of Russia, and offered the USSR a chance to "occupy a dominating strategic position in relation to both China and Japan." However, neither the USSR nor the US wanted to fight a war over it, and Stalin had accepted the 38th parallel as the dividing line in conferences dividing up Japans spoils.

McDougall says that Korea may well have started in Korea, that North and South were having constant border skirmishes. He believes the "puppets wound up controlling the masters" when the North Koreans launched the largest border skirmish possible - all-out invasion. And the US, USSR and China were stuck with it.

The US couldn't let that threat to Japan exist, the Soviets as members of the Security Council couldn't actively fight in Korea against a nominal UN police action, and China didn't want a Korean peninsula totally under US control. The 38th parallel, where the war started and ended, met everyone's essential geo-political interests.

(Interestingly, no US POW captured in China or the USSR was ever returned, nor was their return sought. They were mostly airmen who crashed after a hot pursuit of Chinese or Soviet planes.

And the US occupation forces who took over South Korea after WWII utilized much of the existing Korean and Japanese infrastructure, including the Japanese, to prevent chaos.)

Anyway, another opinion which also fits the facts.

Arf