Seoul City Sue

Anna Wallis Suh (1900–1969), the woman generally associated with the nickname "Seoul City Sue," was an American Methodist missionary, educator, and North Korean propaganda radio announcer to United States forces during the Korean War.

Suh was born in Arkansas, the youngest of six children.

Suh was born Anna Wallis to Albert B. and M. Jane Wallis in 1900 in Lawrence County, Arkansas.

She was the youngest of six children.

Suh's parents died when she was young; her mother died some time between the 1900 and 1910 Census, and her father in October 1914.

Subsequently, she relocated to Oklahoma with a sister.

Suh attended the Southeastern State Teachers College, in Durant, Oklahoma, where she was a member of the Student Volunteer Movement.

After her mother and father died in 1910 and 1914, she relocated to Oklahoma to join a sister's family while she completed high school.

She spent her early adult years as an office clerk and Sunday school teacher.

During her junior year, she was selected to attend the organization's 1928 quadrennial convention in Detroit.

In 1929, she transferred to the Scarritt College for Christian Workers, an institution dedicated to the training of Methodist missionaries, in Nashville, Tennessee.

Subsequently, she studied at the Southeastern State Teachers College, in Durant, and the Scarritt College for Christian Workers in Nashville, Tennessee, graduating in 1930 with a B.A. in ministry.

She spent the next eight years working as a member of the American Southern Methodist Episcopal Mission in Korea.

Ann graduated with a B.A. in 1930.

That same year, she was selected for a mission to Korea by the Southern Methodist Conference.

There, she initially taught at a Methodist school.

By the early 1930s, the Japanese colonial administration had largely banned foreigners from Christian proselytizing, and most Christian missions focused on education, medicine, and care for the indigent.

She may have returned to the US in 1935 to visit a sister.

In late 1936, she was appointed to serve at the Seoul Social Evangelistic Center, and in February 1937, visited Scarritt College during a missionary furlough.

As Japanese colonial authorities continued to restrict the activities of foreign missions, Suh joined the staff of Shanghai American School (SAS) in 1938.

There she met and married fellow staff member Sŏ Kyu Ch’ŏl, thus losing her United States citizenship.

Late in World War II she was interned by the Japanese for two years with Americans and Europeans at a camp in suburban Shanghai.

In a move that may have reflected increasingly harsh Japanese measures against foreign missionaries in the late 30s, Suh relocated to China to join the staff of the Shanghai American School (SAS) in 1938.

There she met Sŏ Kyu Ch’ŏl (서규철 徐奎哲, also spelled Suh Kyoon Chul), who was hired to teach Korean and assist in school administration.

They married at the United States Court for China on December 9, 1939.

She was dropped from the rolls of the missionary service and lost her United States citizenship after they married.

She developed an interest in Korean politics, eventually taking up her husband's leftist views.

In 1939, she visited San Francisco in an unsuccessful attempt to secure a US passport for her husband.

Americans in Shanghai began to depart that same year, slowly as tensions rose in the environs of the city, then en masse shortly before the US and Japan officially went to war.

The cosmopolitan Shanghai International Settlement and French Concession were likely a more accepting environment for the Suhs than homogeneous 1940s Korea would later prove to be, as suggested by the number of other Caucasian women on staff married to Asian men.

SAS remained open until February 1943, when the remaining foreign staff were forced into the Chapei Civilian Relocation Center, a short distance away in the northern suburbs.

After release, she resumed work at SAS for a year, before returning to Korea with her husband in 1946.

The Suhs settled in Seoul, where Suh taught at the U.S. Legation school until being fired in 1949 due to suspicion of her husband for left wing political activities.

They remained or were trapped in Seoul during the Northern army's invasion of South Korea in June 1950.

Suh began announcing a short English language program for North Korean "Radio Seoul" starting on or about July 18, continuing until shortly after the Inchon landing on September 15, when the Suhs were evacuated north as a part of the general withdrawal of North Korean forces.

Subsequently, she continued broadcasts on Radio Pyongyang.

The Suhs participated in the political indoctrination of US POWs at a camp near Pyongyang in February 1951.

Charles Robert Jenkins, an American who defected to and then left North Korea, reported that Suh was put in charge of English language publications for the Korean Central News Agency after the war.

He also wrote that he saw her in a photo for a 1962 propaganda pamphlet, and met her briefly in 1965 at a department store in Pyongyang.

Jenkins stated that he was told in 1972 that Suh had been shot as a South Korean double agent in 1969.