Seoul City Sue

In a command post above the Naktong River one night last week, infantrymen of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division fiddled with a radio. They picked up a North Korean station and got the brassy blare of a Sousa march. It was followed by the honeyed words (in English) of a woman announcer, urging the boys to "go back home to your corner drugstores" and boasting of fantastic North Korean successes ("already there are 6,000 U.S. dead").

"Seoul City Sue," successor to Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose,* was on the air.

Sue pronounces her r's better than most East Asians, but her voice, unlike California-born Tokyo Rose's, is "strictly un-American." One U.S. officer thought she sounded like a Korean who might have lived in England. And she was nowhere near so effective as either Sally or Rose. A veteran master sergeant complained: "Hell, Tokyo Rose used to entertain you. This babe's just a bore. Now if she'd only play some Benny Goodman or something like that, she'd get some listeners."

*Who is now serving a ten-year sentence for treason; Axis Sally is serving ten to 30 years.

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