Did the US wage germ warfare in Korea?

The bombs, Yun explained, had opened – rather than detonated, as conventional weapons would have done – after hitting the ground and released thousands of insects, the like of which Yun had never seen before.

'Some of the flies were bigger than bees and in several colours,’ he says. 'Some were black. Some were larger and yellow. There were huge numbers of them and the volunteers were busy collecting and burning them.’

The insects had been spread over a large area of farmland and many, Yun explains, escaped the mopping-up operation. Disease broke out in the village the following month. 'I remember the adults calling it enbyo, or heat disease,’ Yun says. 'It was terrible. People developed very high fevers, became delirious and complained that their heads hurt. Their muscles ached and they had blisters on their lips. They groaned with the pain and drifted in and out of consciousness. They couldn’t eat anything and just kept asking for cold water.’

With all the local doctors serving at the front, there were no medical facilities in Hwanjin, so there was little anyone could do for those who had been infected, particularly as no one knew what the illness was. Yun says he was later told it was typhoid. 'It killed my father,’ he adds in a matter-of-fact way. 'He lost his appetite, then lost all movement in the lower half of his body, so he was not able to move. He used to ask me to help him to sit up and I had to hold him in my arms.’

Yun Te Ryong died five days after first complaining of feeling unwell, aged 52. According to Yun, in his neighbourhood alone more than 30 people from 50 families died.


Full story here: www.telegraph.co.uk...

I posted an article about this on ATS last year but did not get much response:
Biological Warfare during the Korean War

After the Second World War, most people thought there would be no more wars for quite some time. Unfortunately, the Korean War flared up soon after and turned out to be a battle of ideologies - Capitalism versus Marxism.


By the time the Korean War started in 1950, the U.S. had five anti-personnel agents and two anti-crop agents, tested in cluster-bombs. In 1952, the U.S. Air Force requisitioned 23,900 of these cluster-bombs. U.S. scientists were also experimenting with the use of flies, fleas, lice, mosquitoes and ticks, to spread germs. Between 1951 and 1953, during the Korean War, the U.S. spent $345 million on research into biological warfare (about $2.2 billion in current dollars).

It is not a chapter of history that the US government or their citizens like exposed.

You see what I mean? This topic is ignored - if I was a conspiracy theorist I might be inclined to wonder a bit about it.

I don't think anyone is ignoring it...as much as it is that there is really nothing to make it even presentable to the public...

no evidence only here say, and there was nothing to be seen that would verify that it ever happened...

so what is there to discuss??? Not a great deal here on this... needs to be a lot more research from people that are interested in it....

Bio warfare has been going on a lot longer than korea and the war there, and yet no one has presented much on this particular issue... perhaps because there is nothing to present...

Originally posted by lilwolf

no evidence only here say, and there was nothing to be seen that would verify that it ever happened...

and

Bio warfare has been going on a lot longer than korea and the war there, and yet no one has presented much on this particular issue... perhaps because there is nothing to present...

Lilwolf, this issue has been discussed at United Nations level and is still a a topic of debate amongst various scientists.

In fact there is a lot more than hearsay here than, say the topic of Big Foot, which happens to be one of your more recent threads.

Here is a very interesting excerpt from an article in the New Statesman (I understand that the New Statesman has its critics):

The US has always dismissed the Korean war charges as communist agitprop, but serious questions remain. American pilots who became prisoners of war confessed to the Chinese they had used biological weapons - dropped fleas infected with plague and turkey feathers coated with toxins. When the pilots came home after the war they retracted their confessions, but under threat of court martial.

Endicott and Hagerman have produced the most impressive, expertly researched and, as far as the official files allow, best-documented case for the prosecution yet drawn. The authors conclude from the circumstantial evidence that the US is guilty - not of waging a prolonged biological attack on North Korea and China, but more likely a limited, covert action; a kind of experimental foray with biological weapons to test the kind of war Washington would have waged, had the Korean conflict led to a third world war.

The US experience in Korea, say the authors, "reveals a military culture that allowed an army to resort to scorched-earth tactics, to incendiarism [in 1952, US forces were using an average of 70,000 gallons of napalm daily], to a strategy of total warfare within the confines of Korea, even to the condoning of war crimes". Indeed, their book shows in alarming detail how doggedly the US was developing an array of biological weapons for offensive purposes at a time when the American public was being told the arsenal was purely defensive.

Link

These are allegations simply because nobody believes the North Koreans, and because all documents pertaining to this issue has been classified.

It may turn out someday that that you are right. If the US was not so secretive and released these 50 year old documents uncensored, surely the matter could be put to rest quite easily.

I wouldn't doubt the US was doing research into Bio warfare, but I doubt they were using it during Korea.

I know that according to the NK the USAF was engaged in biological warfare. I mean, they tortured pilots and aircrew into confessing, so it must be true.

reply to post by signal2noise


I don't want to go too off-topic here, what is your point? The US tortured captives in order to make them confess they were terrorists plotting against the USA. It must be true - and they have invaded countries and assasinated people solely on this testimony.
Why are tortured confessions acceptable if the US is the torturer?

In Korea, the testimony of the captured pilots must never be used as a main argument because of how that information was gathered.
However, it is mentioned here because it is one of the first public accusations by Korea that the US was engaging in germ warfare at the time.

Originally posted by deltaalphanovember
I don't want to go too off-topic here, what is your point? The US tortured captives in order to make them confess they were terrorists plotting against the USA. It must be true - and they have invaded countries and assasinated people solely on this testimony.
Why are tortured confessions acceptable if the US is the torturer?

Then don't go off topic.

Originally posted by deltaalphanovember
In Korea, the testimony of the captured pilots must never be used as a main argument because of how that information was gathered.
However, it is mentioned here because it is one of the first public accusations by Korea that the US was engaging in germ warfare at the time.

The book, "Unit 731" said that the bombs that NK said were dropped on their country by the US look like the ones the Unit 731 used on the Chinese during WW2, not like what the US had in the 1950's.

reply to post by signal2noise


Clearly it is easier to point fingers at other countries, eh?

The book, "Unit 731" said that the bombs that NK said were dropped on their country by the US look like the ones the Unit 731 used on the Chinese during WW2, not like what the US had in the 1950's.

You need to research this topic a little more:

From Sanders's first investigation in the autumn of 1945, MacArthur acceded to granting immunity to members of Unit 731 in exchange for data of research on biological warfare. He also inculcated on Sanders to keep silence on "human experiments."

Link

It is perfectly reasonable that the US not only used Japanese research, but also used their weapons designs.

Originally posted by deltaalphanovember
Clearly it is easier to point fingers at other countries, eh?

Ok, then, Chuck, fine with me. Anything that the US receives from the "torture" of individuals in the GWOT is to be completely discounted as false and lies.

So, by your logic and the rules you want to play with, anything the NK received from the torture of US POWs in the Korean War is to be discounted.

Guess that means this thread is dead, right?

Originally posted by deltaalphanovember
It is perfectly reasonable that the US not only used Japanese research, but also used their weapons designs.

Right. So, why would the US use the design of a Japanese weapon when they had their own that was designed from the British?

reply to post by signal2noise


Not discounted, but also not taken as absolute truth ie. A full international investigation could have been held with full disclosure (internal to the panel if required).
Not all accusations turn out to be true, Chuck (!?), but all accusations deserve to be fully investigated.

Regarding the British designed (specialised germ carrying) bombs - please point me to a link that includes the information that they were better designed than the Japanese version?
Don't forget, the US borrowed a lot of captured tech after WWII - German and Japanese technology. How do you think they got into space?

Originally posted by deltaalphanovember
Regarding the British designed (specialised germ carrying) bombs - please point me to a link that includes the information that they were better designed than the Japanese version?

Never said anything about it being better, but that it was copied from the British.

Originally posted by deltaalphanovember
Don't forget, the US borrowed a lot of captured tech after WWII - German and Japanese technology. How do you think they got into space?

And so did the Soviets.