This paper explores relations between literacy education, ideology and politics, based on an analysis of educational reforms during Soviet and US military occupation in North and South Korea. Following the end of the Second World War, anti-illiteracy campaigns in the two Koreas became important means of political socialisation for Koreans amid the ideological competition in international and local arenas. In both North and South, Koreans enthusiastically responded to the anti-illiteracy campaigns, with overcrowded classes and eager students of all ages and backgrounds. The anti-illiteracy campaigns reaped considerable success in not only eradicating illiteracy but also inculcating the Korean public with the beliefs, ideas and values of the respective ideologies of the two occupying powers. In this sense, the literacy education programmes and seminars became critical institutional agents to transplant socialist-communist ideas and ideals of Soviet education to North Korea and liberal-democratic ones of US education to South Korea.