I tried to emerge kde-3.5.5. But emerge was unable to compile kdenetwork because kdelibs isn't compiled yet. So i had to emerge kdelibs manually. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. emerge =x11-wm/kde-3.5.5 Actual Results: Emerge stopped because kdenetwork depends on kdelib wich wasn't installed. Expected Results: I think emerge should install kdelib on his own.
You failed to provide your emerge --info, but trust me that kdenetwork properly depends on kdelibs, so if it really didn't bring it in, you probably got an overlaid kde.eclass.