Author
- Jeon Gap-saeng (Senior Researcher, Center for Cold War and Peace, Institute for East Asian Studies, Sungkonghoe University)
Special Section in Yeoksa Munje Yeongu 47 (March 2022): Korean War Footage and Ideological-Psychological Warfare
Abstract
This article examines how the U.S. military used North Korean footage seized during the Korean War. Previous studies of captured North Korean moving images have largely focused on the contents of feature films and documentaries, while paying little attention to the process by which the materials were seized or to the ways they were later reused in other productions.
The G-2 sections of Far East Command and the Eighth U.S. Army organized an “Indianhead” team from G-2 officers and key personnel within the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division and dispatched it to Pyongyang to seize materials considered to have high intelligence value. The U.S. military then built its own archive from these captured records and used them to produce anti-communist documentaries for wartime psychological operations. Agencies connected to the Psychological Strategy Board planned and carried out systematic psychological warfare across the United States, Korea, and the enemy side. The Department of the Army’s Information and Education Office and the Civil Information and Education Section of Far East Command reused North Korean footage in the film The Big Lie and the television series The Big Picture. These productions, together with the captured footage itself, were mobilized during and after the war and contributed to the spread of the Cold War.