In February 1950 the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung of China met and agreed to support North Korea in the event of war. By signing the Friendship Agreement they made official their pact pledging mutual assistance. In the photograph Chu Yun Rai, Foreign Minister of China, places his signature on the document. Directly behind him, beneath a large portrait of Lenin, Stalin and Mau observe the procedures.