Press Release on the Korean People’s Army and Our Volunteer Army Advancing Toward Pyongyang, Together with Comrade Mao Zedong’s Instructions for Its Broadcast (December 4–5, 1950)

I (Xinhua News Agency, December 4): A report from our correspondent at the Korean front: Under the vigorous counteroffensive mounted by the Korean People’s Army and the Chinese People’s Volunteers, the U.S. aggressor forces—the 2nd Division, the 25th Division, the Turkish Brigade, and the Rhee Syngman bandit forces’ 6th, 7th, and 8th Divisions—have sustained annihilation-level blows. The remnants of these units are now fleeing in wild panic southward. Meanwhile, the U.S. aggressor’s 1st Cavalry Division and 24th Infantry Division, which suffered relatively less during this campaign, along with the British-Australian 27th Brigade and Rhee Syngman’s 1st Division, have been alternately covering one another’s retreat as they fall back step by step toward the south.  The valiant Korean People’s Army and the Chinese People’s Volunteers are pursuing them along the entire front, having already captured the cities of Anju, Sinanju, Gaechon, Sukchon, Sunchon, Seongchon, and Kangdong. On the eastern front, the main bodies of the U.S. Marine 1st Division and the 7th Infantry Division, which had been cut off and encircled by the Korean People’s Army and the Chinese People’s Volunteers around Chosin Reservoir north of Hamhung, have been largely annihilated, with the remaining enemy elements continuing to be destroyed. Furthermore, enemy reinforcements moving northward from Hamhung have been repeatedly routed and subjected to annihilation-level blows.  The U.S. aggressor forces—a regiment of the 7th Infantry Division—and Rhee Syngman’s Capital Division and 3rd Division, occupying Chungjin, Chongjin, and Hyesan Town on the Yalu River, are now scrambling to flee toward Hamhung and Wonsan. Troops on both the eastern and western fronts are seized by utter panic, desperately seeking escape. Inside Pyongyang, the enemy is viciously massacring the civilian population, setting fire to supplies and the city’s power-generating facilities; huge flames are engulfing the entire city. The Korean People’s Army and the Chinese People’s Volunteers are currently advancing on Pyongyang.

Printed in the December 5, 1950 issue of the People’s Daily. (Original handwritten record preserved in the Central Archives.)

II Qiaomu [1]: This item should be broadcast immediately and published in tomorrow’s paper. ·· Mao Zedong December 5, 1:00 a.m. Printed from the manuscript. Notes [1] Qiaomu refers to Hu Qiaomu, who at that time served as Director of the General Administration of Press and Publications of the Central People’s Government. 7£±