In February 1954, the Korean Peninsula was still recovering from three years of brutal warfare. The armistice signed the previous July had stopped the major fighting, but it had not produced a peace treaty. American and United Nations troops remained stationed throughout South Korea, living in camps surrounded by frozen hills, damaged towns and reminders of a war that had ended only on paper.

Into that landscape came perhaps the most recognizable woman in the world.

Marilyn Monroe had recently married New York Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio, and the newlyweds were visiting Japan when she was offered an opportunity to travel to Korea and entertain American troops. What had been planned as a honeymoon suddenly became something very different. Monroe temporarily left DiMaggio in Japan, boarded a military aircraft and flew into South Korea, beginning four exhausting days of travel and performances.

By 1954, Monroe was no longer simply an aspiring actress or glamorous model. Films such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire had made her an international sensation. Her photographs appeared in magazines, barracks, workshops and military camps around the world. Many of the servicemen in Korea had seen her only on a movie screen, a pinup calendar or a picture taped inside a locker.

Now she was suddenly standing in front of them.

Beginning on February 16, Monroe traveled from installation to installation, performing repeatedly for crowds that collectively numbered more than 100,000 servicemen. The National Archives preserves photographs of her appearing with the USO Camp Show Anything Goes, including a documented performance for the 3rd U.S. Infantry Division on February 17. Other appearances brought her before American, Dutch, Thai and other United Nations personnel stationed across South Korea.

There were no comfortable Hollywood soundstages waiting for her. The stages were often simple wooden platforms surrounded by military vehicles, tents and mountains. The February temperatures were bitterly cold, and snow sometimes fell as she performed. Monroe frequently arrived wrapped in a heavy military parka, only to remove it and reveal the sparkling, low-cut purple dress that became inseparable from the photographs of the tour.

At one performance she reportedly began singing while still wearing her parka, stopped and told the soldiers that it was not what they had come to see. When she removed it, the crowd erupted. Soldiers had sometimes waited for hours in the cold or traveled considerable distances to secure a place near the stage. Wounded men were brought from sick bays wrapped in blankets so they could watch with everyone else.

Monroe sang numbers associated with her films and stage persona, including the suggestive Gershwin song “Do It Again.” The reaction became so enthusiastic that an uneasy official reportedly asked whether she could soften the words to “Kiss Me Again.” Monroe agreed, assuring everyone that she meant “just kissing”—although it is doubtful that this clarification did much to calm several thousand excited servicemen.

The crowds photographed her constantly. Flashbulbs lit the winter sky while soldiers pushed forward for a better look. One journalist joked that the flashes were so numerous that Communist forces across the line might have believed an infantry division was conducting night maneuvers.

Yet the visit was more than a glamorous woman posing for cheering men. Accounts from those who accompanied her describe someone who appeared genuinely interested in the servicemen around her. She visited hospitalized soldiers, spoke with photographers and enlisted personnel, signed autographs and posed patiently for pictures. During flights, she sometimes left the senior officers seated near the front and moved to the rear so she could sit with the military musicians accompanying her.

When receptions were arranged in her honor, she insisted that the band and enlisted men traveling with her be included. According to one account, her attitude was simply that where she went, they went. Men who met her remembered that she asked about their families, hometowns and civilian occupations instead of treating them as nameless members of a crowd. 

The experience also affected Monroe. Hollywood had made her famous, but Hollywood’s affection could be conditional, controlled by studios, contracts, photographers and publicity departments. In Korea, the response was immediate and overwhelming. Facing thousands of soldiers as snow fell around the stage, she later remembered feeling neither frightened nor self-conscious.

“I only felt happy,” she recalled. “I felt at home.” 

For the troops, Monroe represented something beyond celebrity. She was a sudden reminder of home—a living piece of the America they had left behind. Some had fought through the worst campaigns of the Korean War. Others had arrived after the armistice but remained separated from their families in an uncertain and heavily militarized country. For a few minutes, the mountains, mud, cold and military routine disappeared beneath music, laughter and the sight of Marilyn Monroe standing beneath a row of microphones.

Her effect was probably best described in a letter preserved among Monroe’s personal papers. The parents of a soldier stationed in Korea repeated their son’s description of the moment she walked onto the stage before approximately 12,000 men. The crowd did not merely cheer at first. It seemed to release one enormous, collective gasp.

When Monroe returned to Japan, she excitedly attempted to explain the reception to DiMaggio.

“Joe, you never heard such cheering,” she told him.

DiMaggio, who had spent his career being celebrated in Yankee Stadium, reportedly answered, “Yes, I have.” It was probably accurate, although not necessarily the most romantic response a husband could offer during his honeymoon.

Decades later, Monroe’s Korean tour became the inspiration for one of the more memorable comic plots in M*A*S*H. In the eleventh-season episode “Bombshells,” Hawkeye Pierce and Charles Winchester decide to demonstrate how easily military rumors spread. Hawkeye tells Klinger that Marilyn Monroe is secretly coming to visit the 4077th to thank the doctors for supposedly saving the life of one of her relatives.

Telling Klinger a secret, of course, was roughly equivalent to broadcasting it over the camp loudspeaker.

Within hours, the imaginary visit has grown far beyond Hawkeye’s control. Colonel Potter begins organizing an official reception, senior officers plan to attend and practically everyone at the 4077th is waiting for Marilyn. Hawkeye and Charles eventually have to manufacture a telegram announcing that she cannot come. The entire camp is disappointed, and Hawkeye learns that even a joke can become dangerous once the Army begins adding paperwork, decorations and visiting generals.

The amusing historical twist is that Hawkeye’s lie was not entirely impossible—only badly timed. Marilyn Monroe really did come to Korea, but she arrived in February 1954, more than six months after the armistice and therefore later than the wartime period portrayed in the episode. She never reached the fictional 4077th, but thousands of real soldiers did receive the visit Hawkeye had invented. 

Had Hawkeye simply waited a few more months, he might not have needed to lie at all. Marilyn Monroe’s Korean tour lasted only four days, but it became one of the defining moments of her public life. The photographs show the famous movie star in a glittering dress, but they also preserve something deeper: exhausted young servicemen smiling, laughing and briefly forgetting where they were.

For Monroe, it may have been the first time she truly felt the affection that accompanied her fame. For the troops, she was Hollywood, home and happiness arriving together on a cold Korean afternoon.

And unlike the unfortunate men of the 4077th, they actually got to see her.