Anna Wallis Suh

Anna Wallis Suh (according to other sources Anna Wallis Suhr ; * 1898 or 1900 in Lawrence County , Arkansas , † possibly 1969 in North Korea ) was an American missionary who belonged to the Methodist Church . She worked before and during the Second World War , especially in China , Japan and Korea . During and after the Korean War , she lived in North Korea and was a broadcaster in the regime's propaganda broadcasts. During this time she was associated with the nickname Seoul City Sue .

Missionary work and teaching in East Asia

Wallis was born in 1900 as the sixth and last child of Albert B. and M. Jane Wallis. A source reports that after the death of her parents, Wallis entered into a marriage that ended in divorce in 1922. In the 1920s she was trained as a missionary at Scarritt College for Christian Workers in Nashville , Tennessee . She completed her training in 1930.

In the same year she started teaching at a Christian school in Korea. As a result of the increasing Japanese influence in Korea, which led to the ban on Christian proselytizing, Wallis moved to China in 1938, where she taught at the Shanghai American School . Here she worked with the Korean teacher Suh Kyoon Chul, whom she married in 1939. The couple stayed in Shanghai until 1943 ; then Wallis was placed in a detention center in Zhabei .

After the end of the war, Wallis initially resumed work at the Shanghai American School , but due to political and economic difficulties, she and her husband moved to Korea in 1947, where she initially taught at a school for diplomatic children in Seoul . The activity ended in 1950 shortly before the outbreak of the Korean War, after Wallis' husband was arrested for " communist activities". A few weeks after the outbreak of war, Wallis began creating propaganda broadcasts on the radio for North Korea.

Seoul City Sue

After North Korean troops took Seoul, the capital of South Korea , North Korea began broadcasting propaganda programs on Radio Seoul in July 1950, which were first produced in Seoul and later, after the advance of the UN troops, in Pyongyang . One of the components of this program was an English language broadcast. Its addressees were primarily US soldiers who fought on the side of South Korea. The aim was to induce the American soldiers to give up or to desert. In addition to open requests to desert, the names of fallen US soldiers were read out in the program, and at times it was also described that the female partners of the US soldiers cheated in their homeland. From July 18, 1950, Anne Wallis was the sole, or at least predominant, spokesperson for this radio program. Among the US soldiers it was soon nicknamed Seoul City Sue (based on Sioux City Sue , the title of a country song by Zeke Manners published in 1946 ). Wallis presented her texts in an extraordinarily monotonous manner and without any emotion.

Wallis' role in the propaganda war corresponded to the " Tokyo Rose " or the "Axis Sally" ( Mildred Gillars ), who presented radio programs on the Japanese and German sides for soldiers on the opposite side during World War II. Occasionally the nickname Pyongyang Sally was used in connection with propaganda spokespeople for North Korean radio . It is not clear whether this nickname also refers to Valais or whether it meant another broadcaster.

The last few years

Wallis stayed in North Korea after the end of the Korean War. There are reports that she was brainwashed around 1951. According to a source, she was responsible for the English-language publications of the North Korean Central News Agency in the 1960s . Under the name Suh-Anna or Suhr-Anna she was at times a celebrity in North Korea.

Little is known about the last years of her life. The American soldier Charles Robert Jenkins , who defected to North Korea in 1965, claims in his autobiography, published in 2008, to have met Wallis personally in 1965; she was in poor condition.

According to Jenkins, Wallis was charged with espionage for South Korea in 1969 and executed.

literature

Lisa Tendrich Frank (Ed.): An Encyclopedia of American Women at War: From the Home Front to the Battlefields. Volume 1, ABC-CLIO, 2013, ISBN 9781598844436 .
Charles Robert Jenkins, Jim Frederick: The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea. University of California Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0520253339 .

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Lisa Tendrich Frank (Ed.): An Encyclopedia of American Women at War: From the Home Front to the Battlefields. Volume 1, ABC-CLIO, 2013, ISBN 9781598844436 , p. 504.
↑ Compilation of actors in radio propaganda on the website www.neatorama.com (accessed on September 9, 2014).
^ ^A ^b ^c ^d Charles Robert Jenkins, Jim Frederick: The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea. University of California Press 2008, ISBN 978-0520253339 , p. 115 f.

personal data
SURNAME	Suh, Anna Wallis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Suhr, Anna Wallis; Seoul City Sue (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American missionary
DATE OF BIRTH	1898 or 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH	Lawrence County , Arkansas
DATE OF DEATH	uncertain: 1969

[Frank-1] Lisa Tendrich Frank (Ed.): An Encyclopedia of American Women at War: From the Home Front to the Battlefields. Volume 1, ABC-CLIO, 2013, ISBN 9781598844436 , p. 504.

[Neatorama-2] Compilation of actors in radio propaganda on the website www.neatorama.com (accessed on September 9, 2014).

[Jenkins-3] A ^b ^c ^d Charles Robert Jenkins, Jim Frederick: The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea. University of California Press 2008, ISBN 978-0520253339 , p. 115 f.