Content note: Wartime leaflet cartoon showing named North Korean and Soviet leaders as marionette and puppeteer, with a death warning. This object is shown as it was published. Why
Message to the 45th North Korean Division: Kim Il Sung as a marionette
A Korean-language leaflet addressed to the 'People's Army comrades, 45th Division' shows a moustached figure with a hammer-and-sickle collar emblem working a marionette labelled 'Kim Il Sung'. The red banner calls Kim 'the Soviet Union's scarecrow' who, to please his masters, is 'driving you into a battlefield of death'. A loaded label and a death warning stand in for any evidence about the battle.
- Date
- 1951
- Period
- Cold War
- Made by
- Eighth U.S. Army Korea (EUSAK), Psychological Warfare Section, for United Nations Command
- Region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Medium
- Leaflet
- Issuer type
- Military
- Regime
- Truman Administration
- Leader
- Harry S. Truman
- Audience
- Enemy forces
- Purpose
- Demonize
- Themes
- War and the military, Media and information
- Event
- Korean War
- Techniques
- Name-callingFear appeal
- Source
- Unidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure
- Source
- NDSU Archives (North Dakota State University), Korean War Psychological Warfare Propaganda Leaflets Collection, Mss 159, retrieved September 29, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (U.S. government work: Eighth U.S. Army leaflet, 1951; Commons copy tagged public domain)
Eighth U.S. Army Korea, Psychological Warfare Section; image from A. G. Brauer, 'Psychological Warfare Korea 1951', NDSU Archives Mss 159.
Text on the object
쏘련의 허수아비인 김일성은 상전의 비위를 맞처 그대들을 죽음의 싸움터로 몰아 넣고 있다. 四十五사단 인민군 동지들에게 ! (on the marionette's chest) 김일성 [faint reversed text from the back of the sheet shows through: illegible]
Kim Il Sung, the Soviet Union's scarecrow [puppet], is, to please his overlord, driving you into a battlefield of death. To the comrades of the People's Army, 45th Division! (on the marionette's chest) Kim Il Sung
Read from a 363 x 500 px image extracted from the PDF; the archaic spelling 맞처 is as printed. The word 허수아비 literally means scarecrow and is used for a figurehead or puppet.
