I found this piece amongst a collection of other propaganda posters from North Korea. It is clearly meant to depict American soldiers as cruel thieves who pillage Korean villages and leave destruction in their wake, but something I find interesting is the way this is depicted and who is included in the image. The American soldiers and the North Korean soldier are placed on opposite sides of the image, seeming to polarize them, while the livestock and a Korean woman are centered and become symbols of what is at stake for North Korea. The fact that a woman is employed here is telling, and it relies on the classic dichotomy of men as protectors/fighters and women as helpless victims. She has already been overtaken and, although I'm not exactly sure what is going on with some of those ropes, she is exposed, alluding to perhaps some sort of sexual conquest. I think the woman being tied to the cow seems to also imply their relation to one another, that both are in the same category of resources. North Korean soldiers are, then, at risk of losing not just their livestock and sustenance, but also "their" women. So the woman here is not just collateral damage, but a symbol for the threat of American dominance and masculinity. It is a war between two masculine powers and it is waged by the damage to resources, women here being depicted as instruments in wartime and their possession an act of emasculation. The fact that there are two American soldiers vs. only one North Korean soldier seems to further heighten the danger and threat of Americans.

I also found it intriguing that this image is not in the same style as most other propaganda pieces. Instead, it's an oil painting and after more web searching, I learned that it is actually part of a collection of paintings from the Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities in North Korea, depicting the war from a North Korean perspective. So perhaps to call it propaganda is debatable (is it a genuine portrayal or only meant to rouse people to anger?), but it then raises questions about wartime truths. What really happened during the war and could we ever know? What does it say about the Korean War and the powers involved? In many ways, these events seem locked away forever, but it is valuable, I think, to be exposed to varying perspectives of war, re-evaluate notions of good vs. bad and state-sanctioned narratives about war, and even understand, through paintings like this, what is seen as worthy of portrayal and what kind of meaning can be found in it.