![\"korean_war_leaflet_color-640x300\"](\"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/03\/korean_war_leaflet_color-640x300.png\")
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The United States and its allies dropped some 2.5 billion propaganda leaflets during the Korean War.\u00a0But after the 1953 armistice which halted the fighting, the Pentagon\u00a0discovered\u00a0that few enemy troops\u00a0ever read<\/em> the messages, let alone understood\u00a0them.<\/p>\n One reason was that pilots rarely dropped the leaflets in the right places. There were also too many types of leaflets with contradictory and confusing messages. And the Army, more used to fighting and killing, simply wasn\u2019t familiar with how to wage propaganda war.<\/p>\n After American commanders finalized the designs, they passed them off to military intelligence troops. The Army spooks then took the notes to prisoner-of-war camps to get feedback from actual enemy soldiers.<\/p>\n If the artwork was\u00a0convincing enough, printers in Japan and South Korea started churning\u00a0them out by the thousands in leaflet form. Eventually, Army units put their\u00a0own printing presses into action.<\/p>\n Most of the time, the leaflets urged enemy troops to surrender and noted that they would\u00a0receive\u00a0humane treatment. Other leaflets declared that North Korean and other communist leaders were sending their troops on a fool\u2019s errand. The designers often added photographs, comic book style art and gruesome imagery.<\/p>\n \u201cMany soldiers are glad to surrender. The U.N. armies sure must treat them well,\u201d reads the translation of one typical notice, showing a cartoon of North Korean troops with leaflets in hand surrendering to a Western soldier. \u201cYep! U.N. armies guarantee the life of surrender [sic] soldiers.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy must I be led to my death in the next attack?\u201d another leaflet asks, with a grim reaper-like figure leading a blindfolded soldier away from a crying child. \u201cWhy should I not live to return to those who love me?\u201d<\/p>\n Initially, U.S. Air Force pilots in F-51 fighter-bombers and T-6 spotters simply dropped the leaflets in crude bundles from\u00a0their cockpits. Later, American and South Korean crews kicked the twine-bound stacks out of C-47 transports.<\/p>\n In June 1951, the flying branch started dropping M-105 leaflet \u201cbombs.\u201d Each M-105 could carry more than 35,000 notes and split open in the air like a cluster bomb. Unlike the earlier packages, pilots in F-51s and B-26 bombers had an easier time aiming these devices at the right targets.<\/p>\n In addition, troops on the ground could lob leaflets with special artillery shells. Like the bombs, the rounds would burst open in the air and scatter the leaflets.<\/p>\n Between January and June 1951, the Army printed more than 27\u00a0million\u00a0leaflets. Over the next six months, production doubled.\u00a0The following year, the numbers peaked with an average of 12.5 million leaflets per month coming off the presses.\u00a0In August 1952, the ground combat branch churned out nearly 20\u00a0million\u00a0leaflets\u00a0alone.<\/p>\n But in talking with prisoners of war, Army officers discovered\u00a0that many had never even seen<\/em>\u00a0any of the leaflets. Part of the problem was the American psychological warfare troops\u2019 lack of experience.<\/p>\n \u201cPsywar, as old as it is in human warfare, is still comparatively new to the United States Army,\u201d U.S. Army psywar\u00a0officers complained in a report completed nearly four months after the armistice.<\/p>\n \u201cSomewhat like the few cavalrymen who still look askance at the tank, the Army is filled with individuals who think psywar is something for college professors with which the Army should not be cluttered up.\u201d<\/p>\n Though the Army\u00a0used deception and propaganda during World War II, it continued to see\u00a0killing\u00a0enemy troops as its\u00a0most important\u00a0job.\u00a0Writing and talking to the opponent just wasn\u2019t a priority.<\/p>\n At the same time, the Army was under enormous pressure to produce as many leaflets as possible.<\/p>\n With the Army ambivalent to the whole strategy, the branch had few resources for language and other vital training. In turn, Chinese and Korean translators often had trouble converting the spirit of the messages using more culturally appropriate words and phrases.<\/p>\n When left to craft leaflets\u00a0on their\u00a0own, the Army complained their South Korean allies\u00a0were too focused on their own political agendas \u2014 such as decrying the Soviet occupation of the region after World War II \u2014 more than the current conflict.<\/p>\n \u201cThe total number of themes made for a bewildering diversity of stimuli which, had the enemy been bent on reacting to them, would have had him spinning in circles,\u201d the 1953 report noted.<\/p>\n In Korea, \u201cperformance has ranged from the unplanned \u2026 the unorthodox and all the way to the inept,\u201d the officers lamented. \u201cUnits reported to be under self-induced pressure to produce propaganda under any and all considerations.\u201d<\/p>\n Even more problematic, the language on leaflets and in radio broadcasts was often too complicated for the North Korean and Chinese troops, many whom were illiterate. The wording was considered \u201ctoo \u2018high flown\u2019 [and] \u2018over audience\u2019s heads,’\u201d the review added.<\/p>\n Of course, none of these factors even came into play if the enemy neversaw<\/em> the\u00a0messages. The Pentagon didn\u2019t research the best places to drop the leaflets, and its method of \u201cblanketing dissemination\u201d over wide areas was\u00a0completely ineffective. When dropped from high altitudes to avoid enemy fire, crews had little control over where the bundles might fall \u2014 and the specially-made bombs weren\u2019t much better.<\/p>\n The Army officers said they did<\/em>\u00a0succeed in cutting down the number of different themes and curtailing the overall production of leaflets by the end of the war. This made the effort more focused on both fronts. In the first six months of 1953, units produced less than 20\u00a0million\u00a0leaflets.<\/p>\n The report also argued for more and better training for future conflicts, especially when it came to various cultural sensitives. After blindly littering\u00a0the leaflets all over\u00a0Korea, the technical side of things would have to improve.<\/p>\n In 1961, the Army\u2019s 7th Psychological Warfare Group published a manual on how to drop leaflets from the air. The handbook contained suggestions on what routes to fly and detailed charts for how far the notices might drift in the wind at certain altitudes.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the Army suffered many of the same problems during the Vietnam War. Often hampered by a lack of cultural understanding and historical context, and still seen as secondary to the traditional business of fighting, the Pentagon\u2019s efforts to win \u201chearts and minds\u201d during the conflict quickly became a punchline.<\/p>\n Still, leaflets remain a tool in Army and Air Force arsenals. On Nov. 15, 2015, the flying branch dropped notices<\/a> in Arabic near Abu Kamal in Syria\u00a0as part of the air war against the Islamic State\u2019s petroleum industry. The messages warned civilian oil truckers to abandon their vehicles or die.<\/p>\n Hopefully, the Pentagon\u2019s flyers were more effective in Iraq than they were in Korea and Vietnam.<\/p>\nAt least on paper,\u00a0the leaflet campaign\u00a0was\u00a0impressive. Beginning in 1951, U.S. troops created\u00a0dozens of different types of leaflet artwork. Translators converted the messages into Korean and Chinese \u2014 as Beijing had intervened in the war in October 1950.<\/div>\n![\"Above](\"http:\/\/cdn.warisboring.com\/images\/20160320005045\/korea-leaflet-1.jpg\")
<\/a>Above and below \u2014 leaflets from the Korean War. Army art<\/h6>\n<\/p>\n