A long-forgotten, or little-known fact is that Radio Liberation/Radio Liberty broadcast in the Russian language not only from Spain and Germany but also from Taiwan for almost 20 years: from May 1, 1955, to December 31, 1973, to eastern parts of Siberia and the Maritime Provinces of the Soviet Union.
Below I will summarize the Radio Liberty transmitting site at Pa Li, Taiwan -- CIA cryptonym FJHUMMING.On Sunday, August 13, 1950, the Chinese Nationalist shortwave broadcasting station, "The Voice of Free China," began transmitting to the Soviet Union. The content of the broadcast was short items of international news presented in a straightforward manner, without comment. The announcer spoke fluent Russian but with a Chinese accent. The broadcast was promptly and effectively jammed.
The original small 1 kw short-wave transmitter was at Panchao, just outside the western edge of Taipei. This was an interim location while a new base was being constructed at Pa Li, on the coast 20 km north of Taipei, an area free of any obstruction. This provided an over-water reflection of the signals directed to the U.S.S.R’s Far East region.
An agreement was signed on December 4, 1954, between the Radio Liberty Committee (RLC) and the Broadcasting Corporation of China (BCC), which allowed the RLC to use transmitting facilities owned by the BCC -- the "broadcasting arm" of the Republic of China on Taiwan.
The agreement provided that the BCC furnish the land and personnel for operation and maintenance of the facility and that RLC provide and maintain the antenna system and related equipment and parts. Under the agreement, the BCC assigned transmitting time blocks to RLC for its use for 8 hours each day. RLC was required to pay the corporation $16.50 an hour for each transmitter provided. In 1971,
By the 1970s, Radio Liberty had 17 transmitters, totaling 1.8 million watts at locations in Germany, Spain, and Taiwan, which broadcasted 295 transmitter hours a day in Russian and up to 18 other languages of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
News programs were produced locally. While some feature programs broadcast from Taiwan were flown from Munich or New York, this was a time-consuming process, so a local program department was established in Taiwan, supplemented by a correspondent in Hong Kong.
To monitor the effectiveness of its broadcasts originating from the site in Taiwan, Radio Liberty had a monitoring facility in Sapporo on the island of Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan.
This audio clip of Radio Liberty signing on is from DX History,
RL 1961 on 9720 kHz at 0700 UTC, recorded in Japan by NSB "DX Time" Producer Jun Kato)
