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Selling the Korean War: Propaganda, Politics, and Public Opinion in the United States, 1950-1953
How presidents spark and sustain support for wars remains an enduring and significant problem. Korea was the first limited war the U.S. experienced in the contemporary period - the first recent war fought for something less than total victory. In Selling the Korean War , Steven Casey explores how President Truman and then Eisenhower tried to sell it to the American public.
Based on a massive array of primary sources, Casey subtly explores the government's selling activities from all angles. He looks at the halting and sometimes chaotic efforts of Harry Truman and Dean Acheson, Dwight Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles. He examines the relationships that they and their subordinates developed with a host of other institutions, from Congress and the press to Hollywood and labor. And he assesses the complex and fraught interactions between the military and war correspondents in the battlefield theater itself.
From high politics to bitter media spats, Casey guides the reader through the domestic debates of this messy, costly war. He highlights the actions and calculations of colorful figures, including Senators Robert Taft and JHoseph McCarthy, and General Douglas MacArthur. He details how the culture and work routines of Congress and the media influenced political tactics and daily news stories. And he explores how different phases of the war threw up different problems - from the initial disasters in the summer of 1950 to the giddy prospects of victory in October 1950, from the massive defeats in the wake of China's massive intervention to the lengthy period of stalemate fighting in 1952 and 1953.
Based on a massive array of primary sources, Casey subtly explores the government's selling activities from all angles. He looks at the halting and sometimes chaotic efforts of Harry Truman and Dean Acheson, Dwight Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles. He examines the relationships that they and their subordinates developed with a host of other institutions, from Congress and the press to Hollywood and labor. And he assesses the complex and fraught interactions between the military and war correspondents in the battlefield theater itself.
From high politics to bitter media spats, Casey guides the reader through the domestic debates of this messy, costly war. He highlights the actions and calculations of colorful figures, including Senators Robert Taft and JHoseph McCarthy, and General Douglas MacArthur. He details how the culture and work routines of Congress and the media influenced political tactics and daily news stories. And he explores how different phases of the war threw up different problems - from the initial disasters in the summer of 1950 to the giddy prospects of victory in October 1950, from the massive defeats in the wake of China's massive intervention to the lengthy period of stalemate fighting in 1952 and 1953.
488 pages, Paperback
First published February 20, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
research
October 25, 2022⤑ research tag: in an effort to organise my shelves, I’m going to be labelling the books I’m using for study purposes as I tend to dip in and out of these.
July 1, 2026
This is a really superlative book on, as Casey points out in his introduction, a vastly underesearched subject - the PR campaign from the Truman and Eisenhower adminstrations regarding the Korean War. It is exceptionally well written and and also functions as a history of the war itself, albiet onlu from the American side. One of the better books on cultural history regarding a war that I have read.
May 6, 2022
I mean yeah it's dry as can be but man does it succinctly cover such an important aspect of this conflict in a way that I've not seen in any other book. Must read for anyone who wants to know more about the time period
September 24, 2022
Lots of very good information and well-researched with solid conclusions. Very dry and academic though.
March 28, 2018
The invasion of South Korea by North Korean forces in June 1950 posed a multitude of challenges to the United States. Among these, one of the most difficult and persistent faced by the Truman administration was that of how to present the war to the American people. What might seem to be a fairly straightforward matter was in fact a far more complex problem, riven as it was by issues of domestic politics and overshadowed by the broader context of the Cold War. Steven Casey's book provides a detailed look at the problems the Truman administration faced, how they changed over the course of the war, and how they endeavored to navigate around or surmount the difficulties before them.
These problems emerged practically from the moment the president and the American people first learned of the invasion. From the start Truman sought a restrained rhetorical response to the conflict, out of a concern that intemperate language might exacerbate the Cold War. This decision, however, gave an opening to Truman's Republican opponents in Congress. Still smarting from Truman's victory in the 1948 presidential election, they took advantage of his failure to define the conflict early on by using it to lambaste his administration's handling of foreign policy.
Their criticisms were sharpened in the short term by the course of events, as the poor showing of the first American troops thrown into combat served to underline Republican arguments about Truman's failings as president. Here Casey turns his attention to the other part of the story, the type and nature of the information flooding out from the Korean peninsula. The reporters rushed to cover the war faced a chaotic situation off the battlefield as well as on it, thanks in no small measure to General Douglas MacArthur's refusal at first to impose any sort of censorship on the articles being sent out. This left the correspondents open to criticism for indiscretions in their reporting, and soon they were at the forefront of calls for such guidelines. Yet when censorship was finally imposed, its strictness proved to be more restrictive than they bargained for, fueling criticisms that MacArthur's public information officers were trying to withhold information that made their superior look bad.
MacArthur's dismissal as supreme commander in April 1951 had significant implications for both levels of public relations. His successor, Matthew Ridgway, proved far more diplomatic in his handling of the media, a task made simpler by the stabilization of the battlefront by the summer. For Truman, however, MacArthur's return to the United States heightened criticisms of his administration's handling of the war still further. Yet this proved in some respects to be a blessing in disguise, as it prompted his administration to provide a more forceful defense of their handling of the war. This plus the changing nature of the conflict finally pushed Truman into making the vigorous case for the war that had been absent for so long, only to find the static, drawn-out nature of the conflict limited the impact of his efforts. His successor as president, Dwight Eisenhower, faced similar public relations problems and repeated some of Truman's early mistakes, but the death of the Soviet leader Josef Stalin in March 1953 was quickly followed by concessions that made an armistice possible four months later.
Casey's book is a valuable study of an often overlooked aspect of war. With it he chronicles a government as it transitioned away from the assumptions involved in rallying public opinion in a "total war" and towards the challenges involved in doing so for the more limited conflicts that the U.S. has fought since World War II. Though it may not be as exciting as the subtitle implies, with only minimal coverage of the broader cultural propaganda tied to the war, it definitely rewards the time spent reading it. This is a book that should be read by anyone interested in the history of the Korean War or in the broader topic of how governments manage the media and rally public opinion to wage war in our world today.
These problems emerged practically from the moment the president and the American people first learned of the invasion. From the start Truman sought a restrained rhetorical response to the conflict, out of a concern that intemperate language might exacerbate the Cold War. This decision, however, gave an opening to Truman's Republican opponents in Congress. Still smarting from Truman's victory in the 1948 presidential election, they took advantage of his failure to define the conflict early on by using it to lambaste his administration's handling of foreign policy.
Their criticisms were sharpened in the short term by the course of events, as the poor showing of the first American troops thrown into combat served to underline Republican arguments about Truman's failings as president. Here Casey turns his attention to the other part of the story, the type and nature of the information flooding out from the Korean peninsula. The reporters rushed to cover the war faced a chaotic situation off the battlefield as well as on it, thanks in no small measure to General Douglas MacArthur's refusal at first to impose any sort of censorship on the articles being sent out. This left the correspondents open to criticism for indiscretions in their reporting, and soon they were at the forefront of calls for such guidelines. Yet when censorship was finally imposed, its strictness proved to be more restrictive than they bargained for, fueling criticisms that MacArthur's public information officers were trying to withhold information that made their superior look bad.
MacArthur's dismissal as supreme commander in April 1951 had significant implications for both levels of public relations. His successor, Matthew Ridgway, proved far more diplomatic in his handling of the media, a task made simpler by the stabilization of the battlefront by the summer. For Truman, however, MacArthur's return to the United States heightened criticisms of his administration's handling of the war still further. Yet this proved in some respects to be a blessing in disguise, as it prompted his administration to provide a more forceful defense of their handling of the war. This plus the changing nature of the conflict finally pushed Truman into making the vigorous case for the war that had been absent for so long, only to find the static, drawn-out nature of the conflict limited the impact of his efforts. His successor as president, Dwight Eisenhower, faced similar public relations problems and repeated some of Truman's early mistakes, but the death of the Soviet leader Josef Stalin in March 1953 was quickly followed by concessions that made an armistice possible four months later.
Casey's book is a valuable study of an often overlooked aspect of war. With it he chronicles a government as it transitioned away from the assumptions involved in rallying public opinion in a "total war" and towards the challenges involved in doing so for the more limited conflicts that the U.S. has fought since World War II. Though it may not be as exciting as the subtitle implies, with only minimal coverage of the broader cultural propaganda tied to the war, it definitely rewards the time spent reading it. This is a book that should be read by anyone interested in the history of the Korean War or in the broader topic of how governments manage the media and rally public opinion to wage war in our world today.
March 30, 2026
It is a dry read. I only read about half of it. The writing style is fine, its just boring.
Its a blow-by-blow of media interactions, and some political maneuvers. This is really only of interest to researchers or mega-fans of the Korean war or of the Truman administration. Its super specific, without broad appeal.
For a book that is supposed to explain the media side of things, it failed on some of the big elements. So one of the major parts of the book is when the general has his fall. Rather than narrate this, the book assumes you were alive and watched all of this and experienced it. No, this is not common knowledge, and I have no idea what happened in the American media in the 1950s, so this book ought to explain it or its garbage, imho. To me this isn't much use is you know it all, and its not much use if you don't, so its hard to see who this book can benefit. I think researchers will get little out of it, and casual readers would find this a giant waste of time.
It assumes you know the Korean war already, so this is no use if you haven't read all about it to begin with.
Its a blow-by-blow of media interactions, and some political maneuvers. This is really only of interest to researchers or mega-fans of the Korean war or of the Truman administration. Its super specific, without broad appeal.
For a book that is supposed to explain the media side of things, it failed on some of the big elements. So one of the major parts of the book is when the general has his fall. Rather than narrate this, the book assumes you were alive and watched all of this and experienced it. No, this is not common knowledge, and I have no idea what happened in the American media in the 1950s, so this book ought to explain it or its garbage, imho. To me this isn't much use is you know it all, and its not much use if you don't, so its hard to see who this book can benefit. I think researchers will get little out of it, and casual readers would find this a giant waste of time.
It assumes you know the Korean war already, so this is no use if you haven't read all about it to begin with.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews