Fuck for luck or How American prisoners trolled the North Koreans

In North Korean propaganda footage, captured American soldiers can be seen showing the middle finger, or “fuck,” at the camera. The Yankees explained to the naive followers of Juche ideas that this was... a Hawaiian sign of wishing good luck.

In January 1968, North Korea captured the American ship Pueblo, which entered the territorial waters of this state. The Americans spent 11 months in a prisoner of war camp, where they were kept in cold cells and regularly beaten. In addition, prisoners were recruited to participate in the filming of propaganda materials.

The North Korean propaganda machine was working at full speed, and the Americans were forced to participate in the filming of documentaries bringing the Juche idea to the Koreans. At staged press conferences, they asked for forgiveness, signed confessions and sent letters to their homeland with words in support of the DPRK.

But the prisoners became not only heroes, but also spectators of propaganda films. One evening they were shown several films about the superiority of the DPRK over the Western world. They used footage filmed in the US and UK. The Americans noticed that passersby who showed the middle finger to the operator were not cut out of the films. It became clear that Koreans were not familiar with this offensive gesture. Thus began the action, which its participants called Digit Affair (“Finger Affair”). Now the sailors demonstrated “fuck” to the camera at every opportunity.

Since the Koreans were not familiar with this indecent gesture, they did not suspect anything for a long time. When the Korean military noticed that the prisoners in all the photographs showed the same gesture, they asked what it meant. The Yankees replied that this was a gesture that in Hawaii meant wishing good luck.

Koreans published propaganda footage in American and European publications. Most of their readers obviously understood what the sailors were trying to convey. However, in the October 1968 issue of Time magazine, one of the photographs of the Pueblo crew was provided with a caption explaining the meaning of the gesture.

Two months later, the article was published in the Far Eastern edition of Time, where representatives of the DPRK saw it. The prisoners called what followed a week of hell: the beatings became more brutal than ever. Although the “Finger Case” was revealed, the sailors did not miss the opportunity to laugh at their enemies and stop attempts to use them in propaganda. They inserted jokes into their apology letters that were incomprehensible to the censors.

Nevertheless, after 335 days, all crew members were released, and the ship itself still stands in Pyongyang near the banks of the Taedong River, being the largest loot of the Koreans during the Cold War.