Talk:Psychological Strategy Board

Psychological Strategy Board and the Korean War

Monica Kim, Assistant Professor of History at New York University, has done work on the implementation of policies developed by the Psychological Strategy Board (PSB) during the Korean board, particularly the initiative to get North Korean and Chinese prisoners of war held by the UN to refuse repatriation, and to remain in either South Korea or neutral third countries. The North Koreans had a similar initiative aimed at getting UN force prisoners to remain in the Communist Bloc. About 21 Americans remained behind, living in China, but later returning to the US around the time of the Cultural Revolution, while about ten per cent of North Korean and Chinese prisoners refused repatriation, though many of them are thought to have had connections to family in the south, and may not have defected simply on an ideologically basis.

The defections seem to have been intended to create an image of the US as offering rescue and asylum to ordinary people “trapped “ involuntarily in Communist countries, the very people Marxist ideology and propaganda projected would support it most strongly, so that defection, if seen as voluntary and unpressurized, was embarrassing and undermined this image. It was also designed to undermine the image of North Korea as an actual state, as opposed to being merely an occupation zone, and so on. North Korean goals seem to have been to reinforce and validate propaganda is America as a workers he’ll, and for people of color a racialized purgatory, and to encourage defection of persons of working class origin and particularly persons of color, suggesting that Capitalist society genuinely oppressed these group. The desired mass exodus to the socialist bloc did not materialize. Neither effort, given the resources put into it, seems to have been notably successful.

Monica Kim did not have access o Russian, Chinese, or North Korean Archives, but bases her account of the North Korean ad Chinese effort on reports by American prisoners of war on the treatment they received. Her sources regarding the program encouraging Communist defections are more comprehensive.

America at the time accused the North and China of “brainwashing” techniques to pressure and manipulate prisoners of war into staying behind, by it is not clear from her analysis of the American evidence that this is a valid interpretation.

While seemingly a relatively recondite episode from the now distant past, in fact revisiting the “brainwashing” controversy is very relevant to present day relations, in the sense that it may alert Americans to the fact that they are till prone to oversimplify in current relations with rival Asian states, treating people too much as mere “flags” exemplifying ideology and a few ascribed “national characteristics,” and to lose sight of important opportunities for better relations that are detectable if one pays more attention to individual nuances and their implications. The same is often thought to apply to Asian policymakers in their perceptions of, and policies towards the West. Where foreign policies are made on the basis of excessive stereotyping — oversimplified models of people on the other side— this can easily blind politicians to major opportunities that exist if one is more sensitive. By the time this is finally perceived, it is too late.

For more information and relevant publications, see Monica Kim’s page at NYU at https://as.nyu.edu/content/nyu-as/as/faculty/monica-kim.html. FurnaldHall (talk) 07:31, 4 November 2019 (UTC)