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.
Propaganda techniques used in this leaflet
- Date
- 1951
- Period
- Cold War
- Made by
- Eighth U.S. Army Korea (EUSAK), Psychological Warfare Section, for United Nations Command
Full record
Region, Country, Medium, Issuer type, Regime, Leader, Audience, Purpose, Themes, Event, Source, Rights
- 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
- 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
Original (Korean (Hangul with Chinese numerals)) · read from the image, not independently checked
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.
