Alive in the North, dead in the South: JUSPAO leaflet No. 2448 and the wrong body

JUSPAO leaflet No. 2448, dated 1968, sets a portrait labeled Lieutenant General Trần Độ, "alive in the North," above a photograph of a corpse labeled "dead in the South." The Wikimedia Commons description the archive relies on says the lower photograph shows a different person.

What it shows

The leaflet is vertical. At the top is a portrait photograph of a man in a dark jacket. Below it is a photograph of a dead body. Three printed lines frame the two pictures.

TRUNG-TƯỚNG TRẦN-ĐỘ

SỐNG TẠI MIỀN BẮC

CHẾT TẠI MIỀN NAM

Who made it

The archive credits the leaflet to the Joint U.S. Public Affairs Office, per Wikimedia Commons, as leaflet No. 2448. It codes the audience as enemy forces and the purpose as demonizing, and the source as "Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure." The image comes from Commons, retrieved 2 October 2026, where it carries a PD-USGov-Military tag. Where it was dropped, and how many were printed, the record does not say.

The problem with the picture

FRAME tags the leaflet fear appeal: the pairing tells a soldier from the North that going south means dying there. Then the record adds the fact that matters most. The Commons description states that the lower photograph is of a different person. The layout invites a reader to take it for the general's body. On the record, it is not.

Leaflets aimed at enemy soldiers try to frighten, and nobody expects a war leaflet to be balanced. A fear appeal built on a true picture is still an argument. One built on a mislabeled corpse is a fabrication, whatever the cause it serves, and it should be called that.

This page relies on the archive's report of what Commons says and does not identify the dead man. Other Vietnam-era leaflets on this site include the seven-flag safe-conduct pass, the Blackhorse tank leaflet, and a leaflet that made up its sender, the Sacred Sword sheet with Le Loi. The Vietnam War messaging hub has the rest.