> local Korean communists ... were much more enthused about revolution in their countries than Stalin was.
Even if we substitute "Stalin" for "Mao", this statement has low epistemic legibility and low relevance. It could have been 100, 10k, or 1 million Korean communists who were genuinely more "enthused" than Mao was, given that there's likely to be N > 0 people who are more enthused about any kind of political project inside of a large population when their enthusiasm is contrasted to that of a single person. That's a given. It doesn't detract from the fact that an ideology and system was forced onto a sizeable unwilling population with Mao's direct backing.
North Korean troops (and earlier the so-called "Yanan Koreans") were also instrumental in securing the Chinese communist victory during the Civil War through their actions in Northeast China. So in a sense they forced communism on China just as much as the Chinese forced communism onto Korea.
> It was Mao foisting it onto Korea. Stalin was a careful opportunist and thought Korea would be too risky and reckless, so he was hesitant but was eventually persuaded by Mao that it was a good idea.
Your statement refers to the Korean War. As archive records now show, both Stalin and Mao were reluctant and Kim Il Sung only managed to convince Stalin by pretending that Mao was on board for an invasion of the South (and likewise lying to Mao about Stalin being on board).
In any case, North Korea was already socialist before the Korean War. And the South also had a very strong communist movement - the first governments that sprouted in Korea after 1945 were "people's committees".
But the US backed dictator Syngman Rhee (selected for his staunch anti-communism, the man was so reactionary his conservatism shocked even US intelligence) managed to politicide the Southern communists in large numbers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodo_League_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_uprising
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeosu%E2%80%93Suncheon_rebelli...