By summer 1960 the communist camp was in a deepening crisis, since its two leaders, China and Russia, were increasingly on hostile terms, and as time went by their competition for hegemony within the camp was becoming more and more pronounced. North Korea, which at the time was politically positioned between Beijing and Moscow, was fast becoming one of the major targets of the new rivalry between the two communist giants.

It was against this background that a peculiar episode happened: In their frantic efforts to drive a wedge between Pyongyang and Beijing, the Soviet leaders resorted to methods usually associated with the world of ego-driven celebrities, or high school queen bee wannabes, not with the world of the international politics: They decided to strategically re-tell gossip in order to manipulate the personal feelings of Kim Il Sung.