The US Cultural Service in Pusan, one of the local branches of the US overseas information department in south Korea, sets it as its mission to propagate decadent Yankee culture and corrupt American style of living, anti-communism, worship and fear of the United States, dependence on the United States, national nihilism and bourgeoisie reactionary ideas among the south Korean people, so as to justify the occupation of south Korea by the US and its attempts to bring south Korea under its control and domination.
Late in December 1981 the members of the Saeppyol Society, including some students of Pusan Koryo College of Theology, discussed a plan to set fire to the US Cultural Service in Pusan as part of their struggle against the United States.
They selected those who were to participate in the incendiary attack and prepared them ideologically. In the late evening of March 14 the following year they gathered and agreed to launch their attack at 2 20 in the afternoon on the 18th.
On the designated day they began to act simultaneously—four for arson attack and three for scattering leaflets. The arson group started action 20 minutes earlier than the scheduled time in accordance to the changed circumstances. So they sprinkled gasoline over the building of the US Cultural Service with a floor space of 600 hectares and kindled a fire at 2 00. The fierce flames instantly engulfed the concrete building as if to represent the south Korean people’s anger against the US imperialists. As a result, the ground floor of the building which housed 6 000 reactionary books to paralyze the ideological consciousness of the local people was razed to the ground.
The horror-stricken employees on the ground floor ran away with all haste, and the head of the Pusan office of the American embassy in south Korea jumped down from the first floor to get seriously injured.
Concurrently, the leaflets-scattering group scattered 800 leaflets which bore such slogans as ‘US, Give Up Attempt to Turn This Country into Its Subject Nation and Leave This Land’, ‘We Denounce US Neo-colonialism’, ‘We Stand against Korea-Japan Economic Cooperation’, ‘We Censure Chun Doo Hwan Military Junta’ and ‘Workers and Farmers, Rise Up in Uprising’ from the third floor of a department store and the second floor of a theatre. The bills carried the unprecedented strong sentiments, demands and determination of the participants in the struggle against the US, Japan and the south Korean regime.
The incendiary attack on the US Cultural Service in Pusan was an outburst of the pent-up indignation of the south Korean people against the US imperialist aggressors who pursued a colonial policy for nearly half a century. It was a shocking event which marked a new turn for the active anti-US struggle for independence in south Korea.
The struggle caused a great sensation at home and abroad and gave a telling blow at the US imperialists and the puppet south Korean authorities.
