총선거 5월 10일 (General Election, May 10): 총선거로 독립문은 열린다 (The General Election Opens the Independence Gate)
A colour lithograph poster for the 10 May 1948 election shows a crowd holding up ballots and marching through the Independence Gate towards the government building, under crossed Taegukgi flags. The gate and flags carry the message: 'The general election opens the Independence Gate', 'Voting is the duty of a patriotic citizen', 'Abstaining is the nation's shame'. National symbols and virtue words stand in for any account of what is on the ballot.
Propaganda techniques used in this poster
- Date
- 1948
- Period
- Cold War
- Made by
- South Korean election publicity under the U.S. Army Military Government in Korea (issuing office not printed on the poster)
Full record
Region, Country, Medium, Issuer type, Regime, Leader, Audience, Purpose, Theme, Event, Source, Rights
- Region
- East Asia
- Medium
- Poster
- Issuer type
- State
- Regime
- US Army Military Government in Korea
- Leader
- William F. Dean
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Mobilize or secure compliance
- Theme
- Elections and party politics
- Event
- South Korean General Election 1948
- Source
- Unidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons (National Folk Museum of Korea, KOGL Type 1), retrieved September 29, 2026
- Rights
- KOGL Type 1 (Korea Open Government License, attribution only), per Commons file page
Anonymous, 1948. National Folk Museum of Korea (국립민속박물관), via Wikimedia Commons; KOGL Type 1 (http://www.kogl.or.kr/info/licenseType1.do).
Text on the object
Original (Korean (Hangul)) · read from the image, not independently checked
총선거 5월 10일 [on the arch:] [총]선거로 독립문은 열린다 [under the arch:] 중앙정부수립 [left margin:] 기권은 국민의 수치 [right margin:] 투표는 애국민의 의무 [bottom left:] 국회선거 [small figure of a woman with a bowl, top right: no text; part of the sheet there is torn away]
General election, 10 May. [Arch] The general election opens the Independence Gate. [Under the arch] Establishment of the central government. [Left] Abstaining is the nation's shame. [Right] Voting is the duty of a patriotic citizen. [Bottom left] National Assembly election.
The first syllable on the arch is damaged and is read as 총 from the Commons description ('총선거로 독립문이 열린다'); the sheet has tears at the top right and right edge.
