Although Russian documents have allegedly put this controversy to rest, scholars and governments continue to probe at the question of communist allegations of American bacteriological weapons use in the Korean War. Both North Korea and the PRC continue to maintain in their textbooks and war museums that the U.S. used bacteriological weapons (themselves originally developed by Japanese Unit 731 in Harbin in the 1930s) over Manchuria and North Korea in January and February 1952. According to Jeff Rud, a student of mine who has done a fair amount of research on the question, the papers of the investigating organization, the International League of Democratic Lawyers, have yet to be examined on this topic in Brussels.
And thus it is very interesting to open up the website of the French-North Korean Friendship Association to find this extensive article on the BW issue and a new Al Jeezeera documentary on the same topic. Two of the sources which I have yet to interrogate, but which look quite promising, are Patrick Berche’s L’Histoire secrète des guerres biologiques : mensonges et crimes d’Etat (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2009) and the work by the leonine Japanese scholar, Mori Matasaka, who figures prominently in the film. As with so many things which cross one’s path on the internet, we can evaluate this one together; in other words, the content of the film below isn’t necessarily wholly endorsed by the blog author.
Adam Cathcart 