LAUSR

In this article we will look at the arguments pro and con in regard to US biological warfare (BW) during the Korean War as they have been made in the subject literature. After the first decade of post-Korean War secrecy, including McCarthyism, prosecution, direct censorship, and programmed forgetting, an initial trickle of academic curiosity has increased into a steady flow of articles and new titles. The allegations that the US used germs and insects as combat weapons during the Korean War have grown into an historical controversy with its own library – a small but recognizable sub-genre of Cold War history, stimulated by the heated and ongoing charges. BW literature is still a specialized interest, for the vast majority of Americans remain ignorant about the Korean War allegations. Few veterans of this war still live who remember what most of us have long been programmed to not know – in 1952, in a brutally stalemated trench war engagement, the US Army opted to secretly drop insect vectors carrying disease pathogens by airplane upon identified sites in North Korea and China in hopes of changing the battlefield outcome. This BW experiment began in early 1952 and lasted through all of that year. The English-language academic community divides itself on the subject of Korean War BW into three entrenched camps – the accusers, the deniers, and the avoiders. The avoiders are not neutral. They just “don’t want to go there,” or they claim the evidence to be inconclusive. Following the advice of colleagues, funders, and publishers, their