Is there any need to choose death? (1951), a UN Command leaflet in Korean

A 1951 red-ink Korean-language leaflet from United Nations Command psychological warfare, run by the U.S. Army. A Soviet figure pushes a Chinese Communist soldier, who pushes a North Korean soldier toward a shell burst, under a question the archive translates as whether there is any need to choose death for them.

A chain of pushing

The leaflet is a cartoon printed in red ink. A uniformed figure who stands for the Soviet Union pushes a soldier labelled as the Chinese Communist army. That soldier pushes a bayonet-armed soldier labelled as the North Korean army toward a shell burst. The headline is a question.

소련과 중공을 위해서

죽엄을 택할 필요가 있는가?

(on the figures) 중공군 / 북한군

(near the burst) 한국

[English, from the archive's translation:]

Is there any need to choose death for the Soviet Union and Communist China?

(on the figures) Chinese Communist army / North Korean army

(near the burst) Korea

Source and file

The record credits United Nations Command psychological warfare, under the U.S. Army. The audience is "Enemy forces," the purpose "Mobilize or secure compliance," and the event the Korean War. The archive's image comes from Wikimedia Commons, which names the file "Demoralization Leaflet 1040 Korean War" and says it was copied from psywarrior.com. The record classes the source as "Unidentified," with the gloss "Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure." No National Archives identifier is given.

Reading it

The archive tags fear appeal and scapegoating. The war is recast as a foreign errand. The North Korean soldier is at the front of the line, the Chinese army behind him, and the Soviet figure behind them both, doing the pushing. The question invites the reader to see himself as the one being spent for other people's purposes.

What the leaflet leaves out is any answer. The archive notes that the alternative to dying is left unstated: the sheet as transcribed offers no surrender pass and no instructions. It argues with a picture of a hierarchy and gives no facts a soldier could check.

The Korean War messaging hub mentions this cartoon by its question. Other 1951 leaflets with pages here include the Pyongyang air-raid warning, number 1020, and the Eighth Army's Kim puppet leaflet for the North Korean 45th Division, which shows Kim Il Sung as a puppet.