# Leaflet 1243: a 1952 appeal to North Korean farmers over the tax in kind A Korean-language leaflet, number 1243, dated 18 November 1952, from United Nations Command psychological warfare run by the U.S. Army. A capped serpent squeezes a farmer's blood into a basket. Banners tell North Korean farmers not to work for the Communists and to hide their rice; three panels show the levies. - Home - Archive - Leaflet 1243: a 1952 appeal to North Korean farmers over the tax in kind 농민의 고혈을 짜는 공산당! (The Communists Who Squeeze the Farmers' Blood), leaflet 1243 Leaflet 1243: a 1952 appeal to North Korean farmers over the tax in kind 1952 UN Command leaflet 1243 tells North Korean farmers "Hide your rice!" A serpent squeezes a farmer's blood; panels show a heavy tax in kind and levies. ## Techniques named on the archive record Card stackingName-calling DateNovember 18, 1952Made byUnited Nations Command psychological warfare (U.S. Army), serial 1243; issuer not named on the leafletMediumLeafletCountryUnited StatesRegimeTruman AdministrationSourceUnidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosureSourceNDSU Archives (hosted PDF of Jin K. Kim, 'Themes in Korean War-Era Leaflets'); leaflet held by the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Museum, Fort Bragg , retrieved October 2, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. federal government work, 17 U.S.C. 105: U.S. military leaflet, 1950-53) U.S. Army / UN Command leaflet no. 1243, John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Museum; Figure 1 in Jin K. Kim, 'Themes in Korean War-Era Leaflets' (1993), PDF at NDSU Archives. Only the scan is hosted. 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, number 1243, dated 18 November 1952, from United Nations Command psychological warfare run by the U.S. Army. A capped serpent squeezes a farmer's blood into a basket. Banners tell North Korean farmers not to work for the Communists and to hide their rice; three panels show the levies. ## The sheet The left side is the emblem: a monster with a serpent's body and a cap coiled over a farmer, his blood running into a basket of produce. To the right are three cartoon panels under black banners. In the first an official writes down the tax. In the second a farmer staggers under sacks labeled with local party and village posts. In the third the farmer stands empty-handed with a piece of paper. The serial 1243 sits in a corner. 농민의 고혈을 짜는 공산당 ! 북한 농민들이여 / 공산당을 위하야 일하지 말라 ! 쌀을 감추라 ! 굉장한 현물세 엄청난 성출 ! 농민의 보수는 ! FRAME transcription, from a photocopy-quality scan; two of the sack labels are marked uncertain and are omitted here. The Communists who squeeze the farmers' blood! North Korean farmers! Do not work for the Communists! Hide your rice! A tremendous tax in kind. Enormous levies! The farmer's reward! The archive's machine translation by Claude, not verified by a fluent reader. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. The sacks the farmer carries, as FRAME reads them, include an agricultural instructor, a propaganda officer and a cell chairman: the people, in other words, who took a share. ## Who issued it Nothing on the sheet names its maker. FRAME attributes it to United Nations Command psychological warfare run by the U.S. Army and classes the source as blurred. The leaflet is held by the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Museum at Fort Bragg; the archive's scan is Figure 1 in Jin K. Kim's 1993 paper "Themes in Korean War-Era Leaflets," hosted by the NDSU Archives. The rights line records it as a U.S. federal work in the public domain. ## How to read it FRAME tags it card stacking and name-calling. The monster is the name-calling. The stacking is in the three panels, which count only what the farmer gives up and nothing he might receive. That is a one-sided ledger, and the sheet does not hide it. The grievance itself is one a reader from a republic should take seriously. If the levy was what the leaflet draws, a tax in grain set by one party and collected by that party's own officials, it is the kind of taking the American founders wrote a constitution to restrain. The leaflet is propaganda, and its complaint can still be true. This page cannot measure the North Korean levy of 1952 and does not try. What deserves a harder look is the instruction. "Hide your rice" goes to civilians, who have no pass to surrender behind and would have to stay where they were and face the collectors. The leaflet asks farmers to take a risk that the people who printed it would not share, and it offers them nothing if they are caught. Asking for resistance is fair. Asking for it without counting its cost to the person who resists is the weak point of the sheet. Compare leaflet 8274, which speaks to porters and carters, and the Pyongyang air-raid warning, which tells civilians to leave. Other sheets for civilians are on US and UN Command messaging in the Korean War. ## Sources - FRAME object record, 농민의 고혈을 짜는 공산당! (The Communists Who Squeeze the Farmers' Blood), leaflet 1243, 18 November 1952. United Nations Command psychological warfare (U.S. Army), serial 1243; issuer not named on the leaflet. - Jin K. Kim, "Themes in Korean War-Era Leaflets" (1993), Figure 1, PDF hosted by NDSU Archives, retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026; leaflet held by the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Museum, Fort Bragg. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. federal government work, 17 U.S.C. 105). Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/un-command-leaflet-1243-farmers-tax-1952/