Friday, May 02, 2008

The propaganda leaflets as the debris of Cold War




Please check this intriguing article above linked.
The NY Times introduced a museum in South Korea which displays approximately 700 paper bombs. Have you heard anything about paper bombs? These propaganda-laden leaflets are better known as a Japanese borrowed word '삐라' (ビラ) that North and South Korea fired at each other from the Korean War to until the late 1990s.

Mr. Jin Yong-seon, who opened this novel museum said,
“When I was a kid, we found these leaflets falling like drizzle in the hills around here. If we found them, we were supposed to report them to the police station. We got comic books, pencils or sweets as a reward.”
Although I could not understand this item as a serious taboo in my childhood, I still remembered seeing some of those weird paper -mostly written in red violent phrase with the images of bellicose North Korean soldiers- near my elementary school.
This reminds me of one common quotation: 'the communism is all about propaganda.'
What really amazed me is that it was also conducted by South Korea and U.S. against DPRK.
Understandably, it must have been signficant, considering the contemporary confrontation over legitimacy of Korea. Since the reconciliation germinated through pro-North Korea policies enforced by South Korea, these childish attempts gradually vanished from our vision and memory. However, it is still dubious to me about whether its underying objective was utterly abrogated toward South Korea.

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