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North Korea Persists in 54 year-old Disinformation

It’s the disinformation story that refuses to die. North Korea persists, after 54 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 totally 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 its quixotic disinformation quest. Japan’s Kyodo news service reported on September 20, 2005, “North Korea has begun a nationwide study on its citizens who suffered from biological and chemical warfare launched by U.S. forces during the 1950-1953 Korean War.”

The false claims, first made in 1951, but most vigorously in 1952, focused on charges that the United States had used biological warfare, also referred to as bacteriological warfare.

Numerous Denials

At that time, U.S., U.N., and other officials categorically denied these false claims 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, Secretary 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.]

• General Ridgway stated in Rome, Italy 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 [Secretary of State 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.]

Soviet Archives Expose Disinformation

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

The documents were first 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, wrote 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 Perspectives, 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. [Note: the article’s website mistakenly lists Milton Leitenberg as the article’s author; Kathryn Weathersby is the actual author. Mr. Leitenberg is the author of an accompanying article, “New Russian Evidence on the Korean War Biological Warfare Allegations: Background and Analysis.”]

The Soviet documents date from 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 13 April 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 Lt. General V.N. Razuvaev, the Soviet ambassador to North Korea, written 18 April 1953, stated:

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 for the North Korean claim that the United States had used chemical weapons 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 was a Resolution of the Presidium of the USSR Council of Ministers addressed to Chinese leader Mao Zedong, dated 2 May 1953. It stated:

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 noted 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 Mr. Leitenberg noted in his Asian Perspectives article, despite the Soviet posture 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 decided, in 1953, to abandon these false charges. North Korea still persists in attempting to spread them.