Anna Wallace Suhr

Anna Wallace Suhr (born 1898) was the female announcer of a series of North Korean propaganda radio broadcasts during the Korean War. Nicknamed Seoul City Sue by American GIs serving in South Korea, her name is perhaps a play on the 1946 song "Sioux City Sue" by Zeke Manners. She first went on the air in early August, 1950. Members of the US Army 588th Military Police Company first heard her about 10 August. She would read out the names from dog tags of killed American soldiers to a musical accompaniment.

Later that month, she was identified by the Methodist Missionary Organization as American-born Mrs. Anna Wallace Suhr, wife of a Korean newsman. The group said that Suhr, at the time in her mid-40s, was a former missionary schoolteacher in Korea, and had tutored American diplomats' children in Seoul. Suhr's defenders claimed the dull tone of her broadcasts as proof that she was being forced to make them [ [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,813223,00.html TIME ] ] .

Fate

U.S. Army defector Charles Robert Jenkins wrote in his memoirs that he met Sue by chance on two occasions while in North Korea, the first time in 1965 at a grocery store in Pyongyang. The last time he heard about her was in 1973, when one of his government minders reported that she was caught spying for the South in 1969 and executed. However, since this account cannot be independently confirmed, her fate still remains largely a mystery.

References in Popular Culture

In multiple episodes of the TV series "M*A*S*H" a North Korean propaganda broadcaster calling herself "Seoul City Sue" is heard on the radio (being rebroadcast over the camp's PA). In "Bombed" she tells the GI's that their wives and girlfriends are being unfaithful and they would have more prosperous careers as civilians. In "38 Across" she accuses Hawkeye Pierce of war crimes for performing an experimental technique to successfully save the life of a North Korean POW.

ee also

*Lord Haw-Haw
*William Joyce
*Tokyo Rose
*Axis Sally
*Baghdad Bob
*Hanoi Hannah
*Azzam the American
*Stuttgart traitor
*Philippe Henriot
*Jihad Johnny
*Jean Hérold-Paquis

Footnotes

External links

* [http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,813016,00.html "Time Magazine, August 21, 1950 Vol. LVI No. 8"]
* [http://www.korean-war.com/Archives/2001/03/msg00010.html "Korean War Discussion List email archives"]
* [http://www.army.mil/cmh/books/korea/20-2-1/toc.htm "UNITED STATES ARMY IN THE KOREAN WAR: SOUTH TO THE NAKTONG, NORTH TO THE YALU"]
* [http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/korea/20-2-1/sn19.htm "Ibid, Footnote 51"]
* [http://www.dcmilitary.com/dcmilitary_archives/stories/082500/869-1.shtml "Army News Service"]