Today's News

During the Fatherland Liberation War, the US imperialists unhesitatingly used germ and chemical weapons against the Korean people in blatant violation of international law and regulations of war.

The Americans pushed ahead with the preparations for the criminal germ and chemical warfare in the greatest secrecy before the outbreak of the war.

After the defeat of the Japanese imperialists in the Second World War, they spared the lives of the war criminals of Unit 731 of the Japanese army in return for the research data on living-body tests using bacteria and poisonous gas and blueprints of germ bombs, and accelerated the research into and production of germ and chemical weapons. On this basis, they worked out an operation plan for germ warfare and carried it out in the Korean war.

When they were compelled to take to flight from their temporarily occupied areas of the DPRK by the re-advance of the Korean People’s Army, they spread smallpox and many other infectious diseases in a very crafty way in Pyongyang, Yangdok County of South Phyongan Province, Kowon and Jangjin counties of South Hamgyong Province and many other areas between November 29 and December 8 in 1950.

They forced the inhabitants out of their homes under the pretext of “house search” and scattered there the clothes and toys contaminated with smallpox virus. As a result, smallpox broke out explosively at the same time in 35 areas of the country and the smallpox cases increased rapidly, reaching over 3 500 by April 1951. And 10 percent of the cases were dead.

The US imperialists also spread the pathogen of epidemic haemorrhagic fever in that period.

The US Air Force’s general staff got the germ warfare research team and munitions enterprise to develop bacteria for spreading cholera, dysentery, typhoid and other infectious diseases and contaminating crops, to conduct research into the insects that transmit the diseases and the methods of spreading the insects and to work out plans for using leaflets for psychological warfare as “spray shells” by applying poisonous spores to them. And then, in November 1951, it dropped the first germ bombs on different parts of the country.

In the period from January to March 1952 alone, the US imperialists dropped germ bombs, poisonous insects and various things stained with germs on 169 areas of the country on a total of 804 occasions. Tens of thousands of flies, spiders, mites and other insects from the bombs dropped on Pongsan County of North Hwanghae Province on the night of January 22 1952 had all been infected with cholera, pest, paratyphoid and dysentery bacilli.

They also dropped poisonous insects contaminated with bacteria in various forms of paper bags and conical or square wooden boxes on different parts of the DPRK from February to June.

They tried to kill the Korean people massively by selecting bacteria with high infectivity and fatality, strong resistance and different incubation periods and increasing the rate of infection. To this end, they used over 20 pathogens and over 30 species of animals in germ warfare.

The US imperialists did neither hesitate to use chemical weapons.

They killed 1 379 inhabitants by massively spraying poisonous gas during the indiscriminate bombing of the city of Nampho on May 6 1951. On July 6 and September 1, they dropped tear and asphyxiating gas bombs on different regions including South and North Hwanghae provinces and the Wonsan area of Kangwon Province, poisoning and killing many people.

They also fired tear and asphyxiating gas shells at the positions of the KPA on 41 occasions and dropped toxic gas bombs on different parts of the country on 33 occasions to kill many civilians in two months from February to April in 1952.

They set different areas of the DPRK as targets of germ and chemical warfare and carried out large-scale operations from May to contaminate them again in a concentrated way at an interval of 7 to 10 days. From November, they employed every means and method to pollute the major points of military importance and transport centres in the KPA’s rear.

The operations involved a bomber regiment, pursuit fighter regiment and fighter-bomber regiment of the US Air Force and night fighters of the marines, and as many as 480 aircraft carried out a sortie to drop germ bombs on certain days.

The US imperialists brutally killed the KPA’s POWs by using them as guinea pigs for germ and chemical warfare in breach of the international pact on the treatment of prisoners of war.

The aforementioned facts are only the tip of the iceberg among the US atrocities of germ and chemical warfare against the Korean people.

The commissions of the Women’s International Democratic Federation, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and progressive scientists of the world visited the DPRK in 1951 and 1952 and, based on the detailed facts they found through investigation, published in many publications of the world the articles, reports, official bulletins, appeals and letters of protest indicting the US imperialists for the unprecedented war crimes.

At that time, a member of the commission of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers said that even the devils in hell portrayed in Dante’s The Divine Comedy are not crueller than the US imperialist brutes, adding that if Hitler or Mussolini had seen the US atrocities, they might have been stunned.

The germ and biochemical warfare atrocities committed by the US imperialists during the Fatherland Liberation War will surely be given a stern punishment by the Korean people.