6·25전쟁기 ‘유엔군총사령부의 소리(VUNC)’ 라디오 방송에 관한 고찰

On the Voice of United Nations Command(VUNC) Radio Broadcasting during the Korean War time

With the outbreak of the war, VUNC under the United Nations Command broadcasted psychological warfare programs on the radio. The following paper, which is basic research of VUNC, took a look at broadcasting organizations, networks, propaganda policies and themes, program scheduling, cease-fire conference-related policies and broadcasting activities as the example of psychological warfare, and lastly the effectiveness of the psychological operational radio broadcasting. VUNC employed the broadcasting of United Nations Command’s Psychological warfare Branch until July, 1951, which succeeded into Psychological Warfare Section Operations Branch Radio Group. Since people with the lack of expert knowledge and experience on radio broadcasting took the task of producing the programs, the quality and stability of the broadcasting were not able to be guaranteed. However, The First Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group dispatched from US had some capacities as a special force in psychological warfare and took charge of the producing and output of the programs. VUNC rented a NHK Tokyo studio and it’s many local broadcasting stations’ output facilities, and structured 7 networks. And it discharged radio waves to the Korean peninsula and parts of China including Manchuria by using about twenty transmitters. KBS became the 7th VUNC network, and thus airing programs received from VUNC. Psychological Warfare Section was notified of policy guidances and top-classed policies of psychological warfare established from the Pentagon, Department of State and other home government institutions. In the Planning and Policy Branch, these were fine-tuned with details again, making them into Weekly Plan and Policy Guidance, and then were given to in-service departments to make the use of them in writing program scripts and other operations. The most highly-emphasized broadcasting theme was to cause the opposition and resistance to communism, internal frictions and struggles which were all under the category of hate propaganda. The themes were newly written or adjusted depending on warfare policies and the war situations. At the latter part of the war, more positive themes such as UN and democracy were used that had more propaganda effects. The time for broadcasting rapidly increased from 30 minutes to as much as 3 hours. On August 1952 by the time after Chinese force intervened to the Korean War, both Beijing and Gaungdong Chinese were used. News and editorials took up more than half of the entire programs, and there were documentaries and dramatized shows. But VUNC programs were criticized that entertaining sources lacked what could increase the effectiveness. At the starting stage of the cease-fire conference, VUNC was used as a medium for the psychological warfare, means for indirect communication and the parley initiative . Psychological warfare-related activities were not to disturb negotiations so extreme provocations and responses were restricted. The effects of the psychological broadcasting seemed high during the first few months after the war, so it was clear to notice the importance of the situation the propaganda is being performed. This was not caused by the high quality of the program or the good radio wave reception, but rather because of the citizens’ need for fast and accurate news since most of the South Korean mass communication facilities were destroyed. Also the very few radio sets and extremely poor electricity supply, which were the absolute conditions of radio broadcasting, placed a definite limit on the effects of broadcasting. The fundamental of programs, the quality of the scripts, were not high due to the writers’ capabilities.