501.BB Korea/7–2149: Telegram
The Ambassador in Korea (Muccio) to the Secretary of State
899. 1. Embassy invites Department’s attention to new correlated Communist effort intimidate, discredit and drive UNCOK from [Page 1064] Korea. To Embassy’s knowledge this perhaps most flagrant example of Soviets using combination overt and covert methods discredit and drive legitimate UN organization from its prescribed area of operation. Since this activity is in patent and willful contravention of GA Resolution of setting up UNCOK, feel US Government should utilize all appropriate means make known Communist activities against UNCOK to Lake Success and public at large.
2. Pyongyang in Korean broadcast July 13 took note of threatening letters sent Luna of Philippines and Magana of El Salvador. Pyongyang stated these letters written by “a patriot in Seoul”. Embassy experience is Pyongyang broadcasts take particular note of incidents in South Korea which have occurred according to prior North Korean instruction.
3. Pyongyang in Korean broadcast July 18 used unusually threatening and offensive language in demanding withdrawal UNCOK from Korea (see Embtel 892, July 20).1
4. ROK action in arresting 5 Korean newsmen July 16 (Embtel 884, July 19), while deplorable from public relations point view, appears to have checked campaign by South Korean Labor Party agents to create fear and prejudice in minds of delegates and Secretariat of UNCOK by alleging Korean public antagonism to UNCOK and by subtly villifying Korean Government and US activities in Korea. Embassy believes this activity on part SKLP agents has been effective to some extent in intimidating and influencing UNCOK and in lowering prestige of ROK. Should Communists succeed in current objective of getting UNCOK out of Korea they will have achieved a major victory in their present “unification of the fatherland” campaign.2 This campaign is predicated on an appeal to Nationalism and anti-foreignism wherein presence of UNCOK is major stumbling block. Communist campaign to oust UNCOK has now gone to such lengths that we would appear to have no alternative but to advocate in strongest way continued GA seizure of Korean problem and continued retention in Korea of UN representation in some form.
- Not printed.↩
- The text of the “Manifesto” of the Democratic Front for the Attainment of Unification for the Fatherland, demanding the withdrawal of UNCOK from Korea and announcing a general election to be held throughout Korea in September 1949, is printed in U.N. document A/936/Add.1, p. 48. The “Manifesto” was sent through the mail to the Republic of Korea from North Korea and was also broadcast over Pyongyang radio on June 28, 1949.↩