Seoul City Sue - Korean War

Korean War

Unable to continue earning a sufficient living in post-war Shanghai, she and her husband returned to liberated Korea, where she tutored children at the US Diplomatic Mission School in Seoul. Her employment was terminated after her husband was investigated for left wing activities. Shortly thereafter, North Korea invaded the South in June, 1950.

The Korean People's Army occupied Seoul three days after the start of hostilities. The speed of the advance caught the majority of residents by surprise and unprepared to evacuate, in part due to ROK radio propaganda rather at odds with the actual situation. Anna and her husband remained as well, perhaps because he was unwilling to abandon a school for indigent boys that he administered. During a July 10 meeting in Seoul that included 48 to 60 members of the ROK National Assembly, the couple pledged their loyalty to the North Korean regime.

Under Dr. Lee Soo, an English instructor from Seoul University, Anna began announcing for North Korean "Radio Seoul" from the Korean Broadcasting System's HLKA studios, with daily programs from 9:30 to 10:15 pm local time, first heard as early as July 18. The Suhs had been relocated to a temporary home near the station. Suh's defenders gave the dull tone of her broadcasts as proof that she was being forced to make them.

Her initial scripts suggested that American soldiers return to their corner ice cream stands, criticized the USAF bombing campaign, and reported names recovered from the dog tags of dead American soldiers to a background of soft music. The G.I.s gave her various nicknames, including Rice Ball or Rice Bowl Maggie, Rice Ball Kate, and Seoul City Sue. The latter name stuck, likely derived from "Sioux City Sue", the title of a song initially made popular by Zeke Manners from 1946. Through the rest of the summer of 1950, her reports would announce the names of recently captured US airmen, marines, and soldiers, threaten new units arriving in country, welcome warships by name as they arrived on station, or taunt African American soldiers regarding their limited civil rights at home. Her monotone on-air delivery and the lack of popular music programming evidently left Ann's broadcasts less enjoyable for her intended audience than German and Japanese English-language radio shows during World War II.

Radio Seoul went off the air at the start of a "Sue" program during an August 13 air strike on communications and transportation facilities in the city, as a B-26 bomber dropped 200 lbs fragmentation bombs adjacent to the transmitter. The station came back on the air a week or two later. The Suhs were evacuated north by truck after the Inchon landings, a few days before US forces entered the city. Mr. & Mrs. Suh joined the staff of Radio Pyongyang, where she continued English-language broadcasts to UN forces. They were temporarily reassigned to indoctrinate UN POWs at Camp 12 near Pyongyang in Feb, '51, after which the POWs were directed to continue indoctrinating each other, with Korean supervision.