This montage from a U.S. Air Force history shows six United Nations Command leaflets around the patch of the Air Resupply and Communications Service. One is a Korean and English safe-conduct certificate with Matthew B. Ridgway's printed signature; the rest address Chinese soldiers in Chinese.
What the image shows
This is a page of a later book, not a leaflet as it fell. The Air Force history Air Commando! 1950-1975 arranged six reproduced leaflets around the unit patch of the Air Resupply and Communications Service. Every panel is clipped at the edges or by the patch, so none is complete.
The clearest panel is a safe-conduct pass, bilingual in Korean and English.
SAFE CONDUCT CERTIFICATE
Attention U.N. Soldiers
This certificate guarantees good treatment to any Chinese or North Korean soldier desiring to cease fighting. Take this man to your nearest officer and treat him on honorable prisoner of war (cut off)
Matthew B. Ridgway / Commander in Chief / United Nations Force
The Chinese panels are fragments. The archive's machine translation, not checked by a fluent reader, renders one line as "To save your life, now is the time," and another as Chinese Communist soldiers being sent in place of the Soviets.
Two tactics on one page
The archive tags the montage with fear appeal and bandwagon, and the page holds both. The pass is a promise, addressed to the UN soldier who will receive the prisoner, which lets the enemy soldier read the promise as an order from the other side's commander. The Chinese fragments work the other way: as far as they can be read, they tell soldiers they are being sent on the Soviets' behalf. Compare the 1945 Pacific safe-conduct leaflet, which made the same kind of promise to Japanese soldiers six years before.
Source and rights
The record names the U.S. Air Force Air Resupply and Communications Service as the issuer and the archive classes the source as openly identified. The image comes from Air Commando! 1950-1975, Air Force Historical Research Agency, IRIS 01123922, via Wikimedia Commons. Rights as recorded: public domain as a U.S. Air Force work.
A safe-conduct pass is only as good as the treatment that follows it. This page does not have the record of how prisoners taken under these passes were treated, and does not guess. Related: MacArthur's letter on the killing of prisoners.
Sources
- FRAME object record, "ARCS psychological warfare leaflets and unit patch, Korea," 1951. U.S. Air Force Air Resupply and Communications Service (ARCS) psychological warfare.
- Wikimedia Commons, File:ARCS PSYWAR Propaganda Leaflet - Korea.jpg, from Air Commando! 1950-1975 (Air Force Historical Research Agency, IRIS 01123922), retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. Air Force work).
