The Korean War told in Tagalog: a State Department map poster for Filipino readers

A Tagalog-language poster from the State Department information program, later the U.S. Information Agency, filed by the National Archives with its posters distributed in Asia (NAID 5729979). A map of Korea shows a red octopus over the north, and a ten-point text recounts the UN's answer to the invasion through Inchon.

The poster

The center is a reference map of the peninsula, with roads, railways, the 38th parallel and the neighboring coasts labeled in English. Over the north sprawls a red octopus marked, in Tagalog, "Communist oppression." A United Nations sword and emblem stand against it. A photograph of men captioned as Communist prisoners of the UN army sits beside a numbered text of ten short paragraphs.

KOREA: NASA PAGTANGKILIK NG NAGKAKAISANG BANSA!

[…]

5. KINATIGAN ang Republika ng Korea ng 53 sa kabuuan nitong 59 na mga kaanib sa Nagkakaisang Bansa sa pagtatanggol ng malayang bansa laban sa pananalakay, at upang mapanatili ang kapayapaan ng daigdig.

[…]

9. LUMUNSAD SILA sa Inchon, sa dakong Kanlurang Baybayin, at madaling sinakop uli ang Seoul, kabisera ng Republika ng Korea. Ang naging bunga nito'y pagkakakulong ng mga hukbo ng Komunista sa Timog.

KOREA: UNDER THE PROTECTION OF THE UNITED NATIONS!

[…]

5. The Republic of Korea was supported by 53 of the 59 members of the United Nations in defending the free nation against aggression and in maintaining world peace.

[…]

9. They landed at Inchon, on the West Coast, and quickly retook Seoul, capital of the Republic of Korea. The result was that the Communist forces were trapped in the South.

The other points, in FRAME's rendering, run in order: the 25 June attack from the North, the Security Council's call to stop, the Communists' refusal, the call for members to help, the forces assembled "within only 12 weeks" (a phrase the poster uses twice), the retreat to a small foothold in the far south, and a closing line that the world "saw the power exercised by the United Nations."

Who issued it

The sheet does not say who made it, and FRAME classes the source as blurred. The National Archives files it in Record Group 306 among Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia (306-PPA-78, NAID 5729979), the series this site treats as the State Department information program and its successor, the U.S. Information Agency. The record dates it 1950; its rights line puts it at about 1950 to 1955. A handwritten note at the top left reads "Tagalog."

How to read it

This sheet was not dropped on an enemy. It was printed in Tagalog for a friendly public, distributed in the Philippines or elsewhere in Asia according to the catalog, to explain a war in someone else's country. FRAME tags it transfer and card stacking. The octopus is the transfer, a monster laid over half a country. The stacking is the numbered list, which tells the story entirely as the UN side's actions and gives no other party a line. The text stops at Inchon and the recapture of Seoul.

This page has no independent record in the archive to check the ten points against, so it reads them as the poster's claims. Where the sheet visibly stretches is in the arithmetic of consent. "Supported by 53 of the 59" is presented as a coalition in arms; the poster does not say how many of those members sent troops. The effect is of the whole world marching.

The appeal to law is the strongest thing on the sheet, and it is worth taking at its word. A war fought under an international mandate is a different thing from a war fought on one government's say-so. A reader in the country that printed it could ask the follow-up the poster never raises: what role Congress, which the Constitution makes the branch that declares war, played in sending the troops. The poster does not say, and this page does not answer it from memory. The same series carried a Korean-language rebuttal of the germ-warfare charge, Germ Warfare. The wider USIA set is at U.S. Information Agency posters abroad; the war's leaflets are gathered at US and UN Command messaging in the Korean War.