28 July 2010

North Korea Persists in 59-Year-Old Disinformation

Washington — It is the disinformation story that refuses to die. North Korea persists, after 59 years of futile efforts, in trying to convince the world that the United States used chemical and biological weapons during the Korean War.

The North Korean claims are false, and documents discovered in the Soviet archives in the 1990s reveal that the Soviets knew the charges were fraudulent as long ago as 1953. But North Korea continues to try to spread its disinformation, and reputable news organizations occasionally err in giving it credence, often citing as a source Japanese professor Masataka Mori, who has made four trips to North Korea. In 2002, 2005, and 2010, reputable news organizations gave credence to North Korean disinformation based largely on Mori’s “investigations.”

The false North Korean claims, first made in 1951 but promoted most vigorously in 1952,  focus on the claim that the United States used biological warfare, also referred to as bacteriological warfare, during the Korean War.

SOVIET ARCHIVES REVEAL DISINFORMATION

Documents uncovered in the Soviet archives demonstrate that North Korean, Chinese, and Soviet authorities cooperated to fabricate bogus “evidence” in an attempt to bolster these false charges. The cooperation included infecting North Korean prisoners with naturally occurring plague and cholera, some of which was obtained from China.

The Soviet documents first were reported in the January 8, 1998, issue of Japan’s Sankei Shimbun by its Moscow-based reporter Yasuro Naito and have been deemed credible by historians. Milton Leitenberg, a longtime expert on biological weapons, writes that the documents and publications written about them “were made available to the most knowledgeable living Russian specialists on the Soviet-era archival records dealing with the Korean War, and there have been no demurrals to date; nor have any denials been made by Russian or Chinese officials.” [“The Korean War Biological Warfare Allegations: Additional Information and Disclosures,” Asian Perspective, 24:3 (2000), pp. 159–172.]

For the text of the documents and an analysis of them, see “Deceiving the Deceivers: Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang, and the Allegations of Bacteriological Weapons Use in Korea,” by Kathryn Weathersby, published by the Cold War International History Project.

The Soviet documents are dated 1952 and 1953.

Document number 2, written by a former Soviet adviser to North Korea’s Ministry of Public Security to Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers Lavrenty Beria, dated April 13, 1953, states:

“The Koreans stated that the Americans had supposedly repeatedly exposed several areas of their country to plague and cholera. To prove these facts, the North Koreans, with the assistance of our advisers, created false areas of exposure. ... Two false areas of exposure were prepared. In connection with this, the Koreans insisted on obtaining cholera bacteria from corpses which they would get from China.”

Document number 4, written by Lieutenant General V.N. Razuvaev, the Soviet ambassador to North Korea, written April 18, 1953, states:

“With the cooperation of Soviet advisers a plan was worked out for action by the [North Korean] Ministry of Health. False plague regions were created, burials of bodies of those who died and their disclosure were organized, measures were taken to receive the plague and cholera bacillus. The adviser of MVD [Ministry of Internal Affairs] DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] proposed to infect with the cholera and plague bacilli persons sentenced to execution ... the [North Korean] minister of health was sent to Beijing for the bacillus. However, they didn’t give him anything there, but they gave [it to him] later in Mukden. Moreover, a pure culture of cholera bacillus was received in Pyongyang from bodies of families who died ….”

The Soviet ambassador also states that he had found no evidence of use of chemical weapons by the United States in Korea:

“Moreover, the Chinese also wrote that the Americans were using poison gas in the course of the war. However, my examinations into this question did not give positive results. For example, on 10 April 1953 the general commanding the Eastern Front reported to [North Korean leader] Kim Il Sung that 10-12 persons were poisoned in a tunnel by an American chemical missile. Our investigation established that these deaths were caused by poisoning from carbonic acid gas [released into] the tunnel, which had no ventilation, after the explosion of an ordinary large caliber shell.”

Document number 8 is a Resolution of the Presidium of the U.S.S.R. Council of Ministers addressed to Chinese leader Mao Zedong, dated May 2, 1953. It states:

“The Soviet Government and the Central Committee of the [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] CPSU were misled. The spread in the press of information about the use by the Americans of bacteriological weapons in Korea was based on false information. The accusations against the Americans were fictitious.”

The document notes that, “Soviet workers responsible for participation in the fabrication of the so-called ‘proof’ of the use of bacteriological weapons will receive severe punishment.”

As Leitenberg notes in his Asian Perspective article, despite the Soviet claim that they were shocked to discover the false nature of the biological warfare charges, there is “very substantial reason to suspect that the more likely instigator of the charges was Moscow,” which played a dominant role in North Korean affairs at the time, as the documents and other historical knowledge indicate. Nevertheless, the Soviets eventually decided to abandon these false charges. North Korea still persists in attempting to spread them.

FALSE CLAIMS DEBUNKED IN 1952

Shortly after the biological warfare claims were made, they were shown to be false.  An article in the April 3, 1952, issue of The New York Times states:

“Photographs published by the Chinese communists as ‘proof’ of the use of germ warfare by the United States were exposed today as complete frauds.

“Scientific and military experts asked by THE NEW YORK TIMES to examine photographs published in the Peiping People’s Daily of March 15 came up with these major conclusions:

“Pictures billed in the Chinese captions as deadly bugs dropped by ‘United States invaders’ were distorted photographs of harmless insects incapable of carrying disease.  The authority: Dr. C.H. Curran, chief curator of insects and spiders at the American Museum of Natural History.

“Microscope pictures of bacteria — the Chinese said they were meningitis and gangrene germs let loose by the United States — were either fakes, photographs of utterly innocuous bacteria or meaningless blotches.  The authority: Dr. René Dubos, internationally eminent scientist attached to the Rockefeller Institute.

“The photograph of a ‘germ bomb’ supposedly dropped by the United States was a picture of a nonexplosive bomb used to distribute propaganda leaflets ….

“…  A Pentagon spokesman added that the leaflet bombs even theoretically were not adaptable to germ warfare.  He said that the leaflet bombs ... were made with holes in them.  Any germs in the bombs would be killed by pressure as the missile descended.

“…  Dr. Curran, the authority on the entomological aspects of the pictures, had this overall conclusion:

‘From a close scrutiny of the pictures it is quite obvious that none of the insects illustrated are capable of carrying disease.’”

Milton Leitenberg, a senior research scholar at the Center for International and Security Studies of the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, is a widely respected expert in this subject, having published numerous studies on this issue during the past 40 years.  His chapter “False Allegations of U.S. Biological Weapons Use during the Korean War,” which appears in the book Terrorism, War, or Disease? Unraveling the Use of Biological Weapons, published in 2008, examines the biological warfare (BW) charges in great detail and definitively rebuts them.  One passage in Leitenberg’s chapter states:

“It was also the wrong season for anyone to attempt insect-borne BW: it was winter in the area.  The reports stated that insects were found on snow, but there they would simply freeze and die.  Dr. Wu Lien-teh, probably the most eminent Chinese plague expert of the time, labeled the BW allegations a ‘long string of unfounded accusations,’ and attributed the named disease outbreaks in North Korea and China to wartime conditions and deficient public health conditions.”

Leitenberg adds:

“… in 2002, analysis was carried out under U.S.-Chinese collaboration in the United States of some 200 samples of B. anthracis isolates from Chinese culture collections; it found all to be indigenous Chinese strains, even those identified by the Chinese as being from the alleged U.S. anthrax attacks.”

He also notes:

“During the Korean War, Tibor Meray, a Hungarian war correspondent, had accepted the biological warfare charges, and wrote about them in dispatches and in books, but he later described his doubts on the ‘evidence’ that had been provided to him in Korea.  He stated that local staff at a Hungarian rural hospital in North Korea said that Chinese soldiers had emplaced the ‘germ sachets’; they had not been dropped by U.S. airplanes.”

Dr. Martin Furmanski is a pathologist and medical historian with expertise on U.S. biological warfare programs.  In a chapter he co-authored entitled “Allegations of Biological Weapons Use” in the 2006 book Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945, Furmanski states that it is clear that an extensive biological warfare  campaign like that alleged by the North Koreans “could not have occurred” because:

“The US BW program did not have sufficient production capacity to mount such a massive campaign, and the agents and munitions in its standardized arsenal did not correspond to those described in the allegations.  Such a large campaign would have required the direct participation of many hundreds of US military personnel, and the direct knowledge of thousands more.  Such a campaign could not have been concealed for 50 years.”

NUMEROUS DENIALS

At the time these false claims were first made, the United States, United Nations and officials from other countries categorically denied them on numerous occasions.

• On March 4, 1952, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson said, “I would ... like to state categorically and unequivocally that these charges are entirely false; the U.N. forces have not used, and are not using, any sort of bacteriological warfare. … The inability of the Communists to care for the health of the people under their control seems to have resulted in a serious epidemic of plague. The Communists, not willing to admit and bear the responsibility that is theirs, are trying to pin the blame on some fantastic plot by U.N. forces.” [Department of State Bulletin, March 17, 1952, pp. 427-428.]

• On May 7, Acheson stated at a press conference, with regard to “false Communist charges that we have waged bacteriological warfare in Korea. …These charges have been flatly denied by American authorities, by the Secretary-General of the United Nations and by authorities of other nations having forces in Korea. ... Although not permitted to make an on-the-spot investigation, competent scientists in many parts of the world have examined the ‘evidence’ submitted by the Communists and, as a result, have pronounced the charges an obvious and clumsy hoax.” [Department of State Bulletin, May 19, 1952, p. 777.]

• General Matthew Ridgway, former commander of the U.N. forces in Korea, stated before the U.S. Congress on May 22, 1952: “I am constrained at this point to refer again to the officially propagated allegations of Communist leaders that the United Nations command in Korea has employed both germ and gas warfare. I wish to reiterate what I have repeatedly stated publicly, that these allegations are false in their entirety; that no element of the United Nations command has employed either germ or gas warfare in any form at any time.” [Department of State Bulletin, June 9, 1952, p. 926.]

• Ridgway stated in Rome on June 17, 1952: “As former Commander-in-Chief of United Nations forces in Korea, and as God is my witness, I tell you that no element of that Command employed any form of germ warfare at any time, and that all of the so-called ‘proof,’ including photographs, was manufactured by the Communists themselves.” [Department of State Bulletin, July 28, 1952, p. 158.]

• On July 1, 1952, Ernest A. Gross, the deputy U.S. representative to the United Nations, said, in a statement to the U.N. Security Council, “I now repeat and reaffirm [Acheson’s March 4, 1952] denial. Similar flat denials were made by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, by the U.N. Commander-in-Chief, by the Secretary of Defense of the United States, and by numerous other responsible officials of other U.N. members, including those contributing forces to the repulsion of aggression in Korea. ... Independent scientists, including at least 10 Nobel prize winners, have publicly expressed complete skepticism of the charges.” [Department of State Bulletin, July 28, 1952, pp. 154, 157.]

During 20 years of “research” on this issue, Mori, the Japanese professor, gives credence only to long discredited North Korean disinformation claims, never the facts that have proved the claims to be wrong.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)