Leaflets are not always a simple piece of printed paper. Sometimes the PSYOP troops find ways to make them more interesting and valuable. During WWII the British dropped leaflets attached to tea bags over parts of occupied Europe. The American OSS dropped leaflets in seed packets. Other such "gimmicks" are known to have been used in order to motivate the target audience to pick up and read the propaganda leaflet. Leaflet 7092 is an example of such a ploy. The propaganda leaflet is printed on cigarette paper that has been prepared in such a way that the finder can cut out perfect rectangles to roll his own cigarettes. At the same time the propaganda reminds the enemy soldier how much he misses cigarettes and promises that should he come over to the Allied side such cigarettes will be freely available. The leaflet was produced by the Psychological Warfare Section, General Headquarters, Far East Command, APO 500, in October 1951. It depicts a North Korean soldier enjoying a cigarette. The purpose of the leaflet is to "establish a favorable contact with the enemy so that he will be more receptive to our direct propaganda." The Korean-language text is:

ENJOY LIFE and plenty of cigarettes away from the war by coming over to the UN side.

Perhaps your own supply services are not providing you with cigarette paper. We know that you have been using leaflets to roll your cigarettes.

Text on each individual cigarette paper is:

There is also a Chinese language version of this leaflet that is almost identical to leaflet 1111, except that the smoker is clearly Chinese and prepared 7 November 1951. The text is Chinese and the code number is 7092. The text is mostly identical to leaflet to leaflet 1111 above.

Leaflet R-7093 - Stationery

Another leaflet that served two purposes is this leaflet coded R-7093. The R usually denotes reprint so this leaflet was popular enough to have been printed more than once. I have seen other varieties that used this writing paper theme. For instance, this same leaflet appears in Korean text with the code number 1112. The leaflet depicts a Chinese soldier writing to his wife and baby on one side in a reddish color, while on the other we see a Chinese prisoner-of-war writing home at the left, and happy POWs playing horseshoes at the right. The concept of course is for the Chinese soldier to use the writing paper, which would be in great demand, to write home. While writing on the paper he would read the propaganda and this would be the opening gambit in the psychological attack on his morale.

The leaflet was printed by the 1st Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group in October 1951. The text is:

You have not got any mail from home for quite a while. You have not written any letters home for quite a while. Cut away the top of this leaflet and then you can use the bottom part for a letter home.

The text on the other side is:

These are two pictures of the daily life of Chinese who have surrendered to United Nations forces.

Leaflet 8398

Sometimes the propagandists were very sneaky in their use of writing paper. In this case they have produced a beautiful leaflet showing a home scene of North Korea in full color. There is a propaganda text off to the side. The back is blank. The concept was that a North Korean soldier will want to use the leaflet as writing paper and since the front is just a nice scene he will get in no trouble if he cuts off the text. But, to cut it off he will read it. It was a way to get him to pick it up. The front depicts children playing on a see-saw. The theme was Worry over home and family. The leaflet was produced by the Eighth Army G3 (Operations Section) on 6 March 1953. The text is:/p>

If you worry about your home and if you cant visit your family, blame the Communists!

Dummy Airfield Streamer Number 15

One of the strangest propaganda items dropped by United Nations aircraft was this streamer, dropped over dummy airfields (areas where deceptive models of buildings and aircraft were placed by the North Koreans in an attempt to fool the United Nations into wasting bombs on valueless targets). It was hoped that by pointing out that their deception had failed, the Communist leaders would lose face and be embarrassed in front of the local people and their own soldiers.

This 23 June 1952 streamer was requested by the United States Fifth Air Force from EUSAK and says:

The United Nations knows that your leaders have built dummy airfields in this area!

The aggression and lies of the Communists cannot be concealed!

Slogan Streamer 8666

A second slogan streamer is coded 8666 and was prepared on 4 August 1952. It is targeted at Chinese forces in Korea and depicts poverty-stricken people and the text:

Under the Communists, the rich become poor and the poor become poorer.

Leaflet 1151R Peace

Many of the Allied leaflets discuss peace and who is to blame for blocking the talks. Of course, each side blamed the other, and here we see a Korean Officer talking while behind him a Chinese officer mouths the exact same words. At the right the Korean Officer says

Peace

But, at the left we see an image of heavy construction and a Russian fighter aircraft and both the Korean and the Chinese officers say:

Airport construction; Airport construction; Airport construction.

The text at the bottom of the leaflet says:

The Free World is not fooled by the lies of the Communists.

The back is all text:

At the peace talk table, The Communist party is shouting Peace, but what they really want is to construct airports to continue the war. Where there is a Communist party, there is no true peace for free people. If there is anything, it is betrayal, hunger and suffering. The meaning of the word Peace when used by the Communists is War.

This leaflet bears an R at the end of the code 1151 which means it was popular enough that the Allies decided to reprint it for additional use.

Leaflet 7248  Armistice

This 23 May 1953 5 x 8-inch leaflet is one of the last prepared during the Korean War and is designed to show the United Nations wants peace while the Communists seek to prolong the war. The leaflet depicts a Communist Chinese and North Korean officer at the left and a South Korean and United Nations officer (that appears to be an American Lieutenant general) at the right. In the background the citizens of various nations hold flags of peace. Text at the right of the vignette says:

The whole world wants peace, but Communists, under orders from Moscow , have created a stalemate.

The ROK Officer says to the Communist pair:

This is a just and humanitarian way to achieve a real permanent peace in Korea .

The North Korean officer answers:

Impossible!

The back is all text and mentions that time after time, the UN had led the way for discussions of peace in Korea . It lists twelve dates and situations where the UN has attempted peace talks in the past starting with June 1950 and ending in April 1953. The armistice would finally be signed about two months later on 27 July 1953.

Just how effective was the US PSYWAR effort during the Korean War? Paul M. A. Linebarger reports that:

When the question was asked, the answer was vague. Clear cut immediate evaluation of the effects of each propaganda campaign was often impossible to ascertain because of the many intangible conditions that were prevalent in the target area; conditions that were constantly changing. Some critics of the PsyWar operations in the Far East Command charged that there were exaggerated claims of prisoners of war who surrendered as a result of propaganda. They pointed out that a head count of prisoners is an inaccurate measure of direct effects of PsyWar used in support of military operations, because rarely is the taking of prisoners the sole goal of any major PsyWar campaign. Other critics expressed the belief that emphasis had been placed on quantity rather than quality of propaganda. By quantity they meant propaganda measured by bookkeeping statistics. By quality they meant propaganda that, planned with potent intelligence, was capable of exploiting propaganda opportunities with maximum psychological impact. Did PsyWar achieve its goal? The effects of planned persuasion in a thousand days of radio broadcasts, in tens of thousands of loudspeaker appeals, in billions of leaflets, may be measured only in retrospect. The question may be answered when reaction in the target area has reached (or fails to reach) favorable proportion, provided that the tangible results of the military operations can be clearly separated from those of concurrent and subsequent strategic international information operations.

There are two interesting estimates of the cost of killing an enemy soldier or winning him over by PSYOP. A 1951 Air Force report estimated that the cost of killing a soldier was $4500, but the cost of winning him over by PSYOP was $750. A second Air Force Memorandum entitled Cost of Psychological Warfare estimates the killing cost at $150,000 and the PSYOP cost at $2200. About 15 years later Time Magazine did a similar study during the Vietnam War and estimated that the average cost expended to kill one Viet Cong guerilla was $400,000 compared to $125.00 to get him to surrender through psychological operations.

Leaflet 8343

On the subject of enemy defection, leaflet 8343 depicts a North Korean soldier who defected to the Republic of Korea while assigned as a guard at the Panmunjom Peace Talks. The 17 September 1952 leaflet is in the form of a handwritten letter from Sergeant Lee Dong Yup explaining his motives and depicts the Communist defector at the lower left. On the other side he is shown talking to a ROK soldier. Some of the text is:

North Korean Soldiers! Read my Story!

The Prime motive for my surrender!

I escaped from the Hell of Communism by crossing the One Life out of Nine Deaths Line and came some over to the United Nations side where the freedom of human and civil rights is guaranteed You too, will realize some day that the Koreans and Chinese are being used by the Russians as their tools for the achievement of their plan Free yourselves from the chains of the devilish Communists, and spring up bravely for freedom and happiness!

Problems

The problems with PSYOP in Korea are the same as they were in WWII and would be in Vietnam . We find the same complaints in every detailed reference of American psychological operations during wartime. As Linebarger mentions above, in general, line and combat officers do not believe in PSYOP and seldom support it. Since it is almost impossible to evaluate  who knows why an enemy surrenders?  Most line officers think it is highly overrated. As a result, the PSYOP officer spends most of his time trying to sell the idea to combat commanders instead of simply performing his job. The Psychological Warfare Branch of the Far East Command tried to sell the idea with a number of pamphlets to commanders in 1950, with titles such as Dissemination of Leaflets by Artillery, Employment of Tactical Loudspeakers, and Dissemination of leaflets by Aircraft.

The website War is boring featured a March 2015 article entitled: The Pentagon Dropped Billions of Leaflets...That No One Read. Joseph Trevithick is a Fellow at GlobalSecurity.org, specializing in defense and security research and analysis. I have edited and shortened some of the comments for brevity:

The United States and its allies dropped some 2.5 billion propaganda leaflets during the Korean War. But after the 1953 armistice which halted the fighting, the Pentagon discovered that few enemy troops ever read the messages, let alone understood them. One reason was that pilots rarely dropped the leaflets in the right places. There were also too many types of leaflets with contradictory and confusing messages. On paper, the leaflet campaign was impressive. Beginning in 1951, U.S. Air Force pilots in F-51 fighter-bombers and T-6 spotters simply dropped the leaflets in crude bundles from their cockpits. Later, American and South Korean crews kicked the twine-bound stacks out of C-47 transports. In June 1951, the flying branch started dropping M-105 leaflet bombs. Each M-105 could carry more than 35,000 notes and split open in the air like a cluster bomb. In addition, troops on the ground could lob leaflets with special artillery shells. Like the bombs, the rounds would burst open in the air and scatter the leaflets. Between January and June 1951, the Army printed more than 27 million leaflets. Over the next six months, production doubled. The following year, the numbers peaked with an average of 12.5 million leaflets per month coming off the presses. In August 1952, the ground combat branch churned out nearly 20 million leaflets alone. But in talking with prisoners of war, Army officers discovered that many had never even seen any of the leaflets. The Psywar branch had few resources for language and other vital training. Chinese and Korean translators often had trouble converting the spirit of the messages using more culturally appropriate words and phrases. Units reported to be under self-induced pressure to produce propaganda under any and all considerations. Even more problematic, the language on leaflets and in radio broadcasts was often too complicated for the North Korean and Chinese troops, many whom were illiterate. The Pentagon didnt research the best places to drop the leaflets, and its method of blanketing dissemination over wide areas was completely ineffective. When dropped from high altitudes to avoid enemy fire, crews had little control over where the bundles might fall.

Herbert Avedon notes an obsession with the production of leaflets in Psywar Commentary Number 1, (14 November 1952):

The Far East Command goal seemed simply to drop fourteen million leaflets a week for no other reason than to bring the years total to one billion. Enemy troops are either walking about in piles of leaflets up to their ankles or the billions of leaflets being dropped are scattered all over the Korean hills forever beyond the range of targets.

In addition, the fighting men seldom realize the importance of PSYOP. Pilots dont want to risk their lives dropping paper instead of bombs, and artillerymen would rather fire high explosives at the enemy instead of paper bullets.

Jacobson mentions what almost amount to sabotage:

The artillery community had begun its own psywar campaign and unsubstantiated rumors circulated throughout Eighth Army units that leaflet shells caused excessive wear on artillery tubes, a ridiculous assertion that slowed down, and in some instances stopped leaflet missions until intervention by General McClure at the Pentagon.

Jacobson mentions a second such case when he mentions a letter from a member of a loudspeaker team:

Never in the recorded history of warfare, including that of the United States Army, has there ever been a unit that was hated by both sides It (the team) performed missions at night, and incredibly, in daylight as well, on an almost daily basis  sometimes two in a 24 hour period and it invariably drew fire, most of them a lot of fire. This did not sit well with our troops who were counting points and hoping that a live and let live period would result in a rotation home or a cease-fire. When we appeared, everyone headed for the bunkers after giving us a heartfelt finger or drawing it across their throats.

Jacobson mentions cases where Americans fired at their own loudspeaker teams and one case where a sergeant allegedly threatened to kill the team members with his .45 pistol.

Another problem is that there are seldom enough trained PSYOP officers. As a result, the job usually becomes an extra detail for some regular headquarters officer. There is always a shortage of trained translators. And, there is usually a dearth of supplies, the artillery not wanting to give up their shells and the Air Force not wanting to give up their bombs for leafleting.

Many times there are one or more types of languages spoken by the enemy. A complaint I heard several times was that the U.N. leaflets to Chinese troops in Korea were written in High Chinese, the formal language used by wealthy and educated people. The Chinese peasants and farmers drafted into the Army, if they could read at all, read a much simpler type of Chinese. It is likely that the great majority of the Chinese troops that were targeted by the UN had no idea what the message on the leaflet said. The simplified Chinese writing existed, but the Chinese government did not recognize it as an official form of writing until 1956, long after the shooting phase of the war was over. A Chinese scholar told me:

I think the real problem was that the soldiers could not read at all. I heard from some sources that most of the time, the only literate member in a military unit was the political officer. One of his main tasks was to write letters home for his comrades.

In Korea , there was also the inter-service rivalry between the Army and the new Air Force for the leadership of psychological warfare. Both felt that they were better equipped to be the primary service.

There was also the problem of getting the combat troops to accept enemy soldiers who wanted to surrender. This was a great problem in WWII where the military spent a great deal of time and effort convincing its own troops not to kill deserters who may have useful intelligence. Once again, during the Korean War, some American troops disliked taking prisoners.

Hansen mentions an intelligence officer who tried to come over to the Allies until he was cut down.

When his body was pulled in, his notebook was found to be loaded with vital intelligence. But the man himself, who might be presumed to know vastly more, was dead The circulars and lectures did not touch the Koreans, who figured that the only good communist soldier was a dead one.

CONCLUSION

Jacobson discusses the effectiveness of the PSYOP campaign in Korea . Some of his comments are:

Did the dissemination of billions of leaflets and thousands of loudspeaker messages make any difference? Did psychological warfare achieve any meaningful results? The problem of evaluating psychological warfare techniques is a problem as old as the weapon itself. Measuring human behavior and attitude change in any situation can prove a tricky and difficult proposition. Overstating the case for psywar and the resultant failure to achieve results caused some commanders, especially in the field, to disregard any claims as to the value of the weapon. A reasonable estimate provided by U.S. Army official histories concludes that about 450,000 North Korean and Chinese troops perished from 1950-1953. The UN captured somewhere between 160,000 and 180,000 prisoners during the conflict. Determining the exact number is complicated by the fact that many North Korean prisoners did not appear on official rosters. Based on the repatriation numbers from the end of the war, the UN captured 21,374 Chinese troops and 100,000 North Koreans. The UN repatriated approximately 76,823 Koreans and 6,670 Chinese to Communist control at the end of the war. 7900 Koreans and 14,704 Chinese refused to be repatriated. In addition to these 106,000 prisoners, an estimated 60,000 Korean POWs and civilian internees had already been screened, released, or freed by a sanctioned escape ordered by President Syngman Rhee.

Early in the war, General McClure informed the senior Army leadership that 68% of the Chinese forces and 65% of the North Korean forces had been influenced by U.S. psywar programs. EUSAK data for 1952 and 1953 combined proved even more encouraging with 85.6% of Chinese and 68.5% of North Koreans who had voluntarily surrendered admitting they had done so due in part to psywar messages.

Assessments conducted by the military during and after the Korean War demonstrated that psywar messages alone rarely proved to be the decisive factor in creating behavior changes among enemy soldiers. Rather, it was the combined impact of conventional military action and psychological warfare that compelled the enemy to take particular actions.

POST WAR PSYOP

In theory, the Korean War ended on 27 July 1953 when an agreement was signed between the Commander-in-Chief, United Nations Command, and the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army and the Commander of the Chinese People's volunteers, concerning a military armistice in Korea. This may have been the official truce date, but the armistice negotiations continued for almost two years, first at Kaesong, then at Panmunjom. During this phase and even later, both sides conducted operations in an attempt to get a better deal. The Communists had armed agents left behind or abandoned in South Korea, and the Allies conducted a regular propaganda campaign against them. The Allies prepared several propaganda newspapers designed to keep the people of South Korea updated on current events and loyal to the government.

Free World Weekly Digest No. 223  22 July 1956

The 8339th Army Unit, Far East Psychological Warfare Detachment, published the Free World Weekly Digest for the citizens of the Republic of Korea. Early issues featured short news stories and cartoon strips For instance; Number 219 dated 22 June 1955 mentioned Adenauer of Germany, Chou En-lai, Confucius, Life behind the Iron Curtain and the Voice of the United Nations radio schedule. Number 223, dated 22 July 1955 depicted above mentions Eisenhower, Vishinski, Life behind the Iron Curtain, satellite farm workers miserable, and the Mayor of Seoul granting citizenship to North Korean pilot defectors.

Bright Hope  No. 23  3 April 1956

The Office of Psychological Warfare of the Eight United States Army published the newspaper Bright Hope. It was designed as a semi-monthly newspaper as part of the consolidation effort aimed at those areas liberated from Communist control. It was four pages, with hand-lettered text and headlines, cartoons, illustrations and occasional photographs. The issue above coded 2596 mentions the Communist double-cross in Korea, Atomic weapons to be used if the Communists invade again and the ROK Army second in the Free World.

A third newspaper entitled Our Village, was printed by the Psychological Warfare Division of the Eighth United States Army (Forward). This paper was prepared in conjunction with the Republic of Korea Psywar Section. Number 4287 dated 23 November 1954 was designed to forge a good relationship between the army and farmers in the countryside and motivate loyalty toward the Republic of Korea. This issue has numerous articles on agricultural life and practices in South and North Korea.

A fourth PSYOP newspaper was entitled Rehabilitation News. It was printed by the Psychological Warfare Division of the Eighth United States Army (Rear) in cooperation with the United Nations Command and the Economic Coordinator for Korea to keep the people of the Republic of Korea updated on what the Free World was doing to rehabilitate their country. Issue 21, coded 5621 and dated 24 February 1956 features 23 short articles including the completion of railroad lines, Greater economic progress, more millions for Korea, etc.

There were also a number of posters and leaflets produced and disseminated shortly after the end of the war. For instance, poster 5825 dated 31 January 1955 informs the Korean people of improvements in their water system while poster 5857 depicts a symbolic illustration of the fight against leprosy. The First Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet group was still in Korea and they printed monthly calendars starting about November 1953. The August 1954 calendar coded 2537 featured the birthday of Tan-gun (founder of Korea), Korean Alphabet Day and Sejong the Great who invented the Korean alphabet.

Leaflet 2414 dated 1 June 1956 is entitled Submission leaflet and aimed at the Communist bandits in the Mt. Ilwol area. It was printed by the Psychological Warfare Division of the Eighth United States Army (Rear) and addresses the bandit leader by name and describes the conditions under which his band exists and stresses the fact that other such groups have surrendered and the impossibility of escaping back to North Korea. It offers amnesty.

I should note that when the British talked about the guerrillas in Malaya or Kenya they always called them bandits. They seldom legitimized them by calling them Communists or Mau Mau. The Americans seem to have taken the same approach here, and instead of calling these North Korean soldiers left behind as their army retreated, Communist troops, prefer to call them bandits. It depersonalizes them, makes them criminals and unites the people against them.

ADDENDUM

The Memories of Propaganda Leaflets

Many years after the end of the Korean War, I was invited to take part in a Korean Leaflet exhibition. In 2008, The Oldies-But-Goodies Museum of Jeongseon Arirang School in South Korea prepared The Memories of Propaganda Leaflets, a special exhibition to depict Korean War and Cold War psychological warfare in the Korean Peninsula. Yongseon Jin exhibited 700 samples of paper bombs, the leaflets North and South Korea fired at each other in the years spanning the 1950-53 Korean War and up to 2000, when reconciliation efforts prompted a cease-fire in the propaganda contest. The leaflets are still wonderful historical documents.

Cheonggyecheon Museum

On the 60th anniversary of the Korean War in August 2010, The Cheonggyecheon Museum in central Seoul held an exhibition entitled The Unseen War: Flyers.

According to the Museum, the Communist side dropped 300 million flyers, while the United Nations dispersed 2.5 billion. In Korean these flyers are called ppira, which is a borrowing, through Japanese, of the English word bill as in handbill, another word for a leaflet. At this exhibition, 445 leaflets were on display. They were provided by the Republic of Korea Military Academy and the Republic of Korea Army Museum, who jointly organized this exhibition with the Cheonggyecheon Museum.

Even after the armistice was signed on July 27, 1953, both sides continued to litter the other with propaganda flyers, millions of them, printed on better quality paper and using photographs as well as caricatures. Instead of using bombers and howitzers, flyers were sent over the DMZ by balloons, in packages designed to scatter over different areas at different times, so as to maximize dispersal. In South Korea, school children were encouraged to collect these leaflets and turn them in to their teachers at school in exchange for a reward such as a notebook or pencils. This was because the leaflets were banned for being seditious literature. North and South Korea only stopped sending leaflets to each other in 2004, as a result of an agreement reached in the year 2000, fifty years after the Korean War began.

The Korean War Memorial Museum

The Korean War Memorial Museum located in Seoul honors all those troops that fought in the war to protect the sovereignty of South Korea. A number of wartime propaganda leaflets and posters are on permanent display there.

Leaflet Display

Wooyoung Alex Kim was kind enough to visit the Museum to take some photographs of the Korean War propaganda leaflets on display there. The above picture shows various Allied leaflets to the North Koreans. The picture is small and the leaflets are hard to see but I recognize The 1st Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group leaflet 1285 in the second row from the top, dead center.

For additional information on propaganda used by the two Koreas after the end of the Korean War click here.

Readers with questions or comments on the above article are encouraged to contact the author at sgmbert@hotmail.com.

© 18 January 2006