# A 1951 Eighth Army leaflet aimed at one North Korean division A Korean-language leaflet from the Eighth U.S. Army's Psychological Warfare Section, 1951, addressed by number to the soldiers of the North Korean 45th Division. A figure with a hammer-and-sickle collar works a puppet marked Kim Il Sung, and a red banner says Kim is sending them to die to please his master. - Home - Archive - A 1951 Eighth Army leaflet aimed at one North Korean division Message to the 45th North Korean Division: Kim Il Sung as a marionette A 1951 Eighth Army leaflet aimed at one North Korean division 1951 Eighth U.S. Army leaflet in Korean to the North Korean 45th Division: Kim Il Sung drawn as a Soviet-worked puppet sending soldiers to die. ## Techniques named on the archive record Name-callingFear appeal Date1951Made byEighth U.S. Army Korea (EUSAK), Psychological Warfare Section, for United Nations CommandMediumLeafletCountryUnited StatesRegimeTruman AdministrationSourceUnidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosureSourceNDSU Archives (North Dakota State University), Korean War Psychological Warfare Propaganda Leaflets Collection, Mss 159 , retrieved September 29, 2026SourcePublic 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. Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records. Full record at propagandaarchive.org A Korean-language leaflet from the Eighth U.S. Army's Psychological Warfare Section, 1951, addressed by number to the soldiers of the North Korean 45th Division. A figure with a hammer-and-sickle collar works a puppet marked Kim Il Sung, and a red banner says Kim is sending them to die to please his master. ## The drawing and the words A man with a moustache and a hammer and sickle on his collar holds the control bar of a marionette. The puppet's chest carries a name. A red banner runs across the sheet, and a smaller line names the readers it was meant for. Faint mirror-image text from the back of the paper shows through, and FRAME does not try to read it. 쏘련의 허수아비인 김일성은 상전의 비위를 맞처 그대들을 죽음의 싸움터로 몰아 넣고 있다. 四十五사단 인민군 동지들에게 ! (on the marionette's chest) 김일성 FRAME transcription. The archive's English, a machine translation by Claude not verified by a fluent reader: "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!" FRAME notes that 허수아비 literally means scarecrow and is used for a figurehead. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. ## Who issued it FRAME credits the Psychological Warfare Section of the Eighth U.S. Army Korea (EUSAK), working for the United Nations Command. The leaflet does not say so; FRAME classes the source as blurred. The image comes from a compilation titled "Psychological Warfare Korea 1951," credited to A. G. Brauer, in the Korean War Psychological Warfare Propaganda Leaflets Collection at North Dakota State University (Mss 159). The rights line records it as a public-domain U.S. government work. ## How to read it The address line is the most telling thing on the sheet. It names one division. A sheet written for a single unit implies that its writers knew, or believed they knew, which unit was across the line. A leaflet that speaks to "you" by unit number can carry a quiet second message: we know where you are. FRAME tags it name-calling and fear appeal. The puppet image and the word "scarecrow" are the name-calling; the "battlefield of death" is the fear. Neither is evidence of anything. The sheet asserts that Kim served Moscow and that the soldier's death would serve Kim, and leaves it there. The face offers no exit, no safe-conduct line and no instruction, and the text showing through from the back is not legible in the archive's image. On the face alone, it reads as a demoralization sheet rather than a surrender appeal. How far Moscow directed Kim is a historical question this page does not settle from the archive. The cartoon does not settle it either; it draws the conclusion and skips the argument. The same split-the-alliance theme runs through leaflet 7230, which tells Chinese soldiers that Moscow would not give full aid. More sheets of this kind are listed on the US and UN Command messaging in the Korean War hub. ## Sources - FRAME object record, "Message to the 45th North Korean Division: Kim Il Sung as a marionette," 1951. Eighth U.S. Army Korea (EUSAK), Psychological Warfare Section, for United Nations Command. - NDSU Archives (North Dakota State University), Korean War Psychological Warfare Propaganda Leaflets Collection, Mss 159, collection record, retrieved by the archive 29 September 2026. Image from A. G. Brauer, "Psychological Warfare Korea 1951." Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work). Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/eusak-kim-puppet-leaflet-45th-division-1951/