Biological warfare in North Korea?

Discussion in 'History' started by chimpkin, Mar 30, 2011.

  1. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    :bugeye:

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    It sounds awfully dotty...

    According to North Korean and Chinese medical records, there was a systematic dropping of infection-bearing insects over North Korea and adjoining parts of China.

    This is really weird and the first I've ever heard of this.

    But apparently the communists mounted a huge inoculation and cleanup campaign in response.
    All this is well-documented on their part.

    http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/e/endicott-biological.html
     
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  3. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    Edited: Message I was responding to deleted.

    To clarify my position: I'm not advocating for or against this article per se. What I'm wondering-is this something my government actually tried, or a bunch of whackadoodle made up by the CCP and North Koreans? Then bought by a credulous reporter?
    Please support your arguments? Pretty Please?


    Anyway:

    Flies land on food sold by food vendors. Walk on it. Food is eaten. Person gets cholera?

    I don't actually know if cholera is spread this way. I've always heard water contamination myself.

    I *do* know that it is possible to get hepatitis from food vendors from airborne dried human fecal dust in third world countries-why a tourist shouldn't eat from roadside food stands.
     
    Last edited: Apr 1, 2011
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  5. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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  7. tomhanks Registered Member

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    with the progress of socity,the problem would be solved step by step
     
  8. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Although there are quite a number of "Number 1 rule is...", one of the most important ones is this:

    Rule Number 1: Never, ever trust ANY information put out by North Korea!
     
  9. Tyler Registered Senior Member

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    Both current Chinese and Russian scholarship dismiss any claims of biological warfare on the part of the Americans. North Korea, of course, still says it happened. I'm doing research right now on Chinese media representations of North Korea before, during and after the war, and one interesting thing is that the claims of biological warfare only come out way after the Chinese retroactively say it came out. Basically, it's an obvious fraud. Imagine if the U.S. government suddenly today said "oh yeah, and Saddam used biological warfare on our boys six years ago...and we told you six years ago, you just forget..."
     
  10. birch Valued Senior Member

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  11. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    Ah, then it likely didn't happen.

    North Korea seems to be run by a lunatic, so, generally, what they say isn't credible.

    If the current academic establishment in China says it didn't happen...when it seems it would be to the advantage of the CCP to at least keep up the pretense that it did...

    Then it is almost certainly a fabrication.

    Alright. Thanks Tyler.

    The US government and the medical establishment in the US were experimenting on mental patients and prisoners in Guatemala.

    They did nonconsensual medical experiments on psychiatric patients, the institutionalized mentally retarded, and consensual chemical exposure experiments on prisoners in the US too during the same time period.

    SO
    As far as dropping plague fleas on the Koreans...I could see my government doing that, yeah.

    But apparently there's not good documentation that they did.
     
    Last edited: Apr 1, 2011
  12. fedr808 1100101 Valued Senior Member

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    No, that's at best rule number two.

    Rule number one is, don't get caught.
     
  13. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Nice try. The REAL #1 is don't DO anything that you could be caught for. Too bad that so many fools don't understand that.:shrug:
     
  14. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    The US government has not been observed to be very good at that part.

    I'm...yes, drifting off topic here...but I guess what we did do in that war was bad enough.
    We committed war crimes ourselves and allowed the South Koreans to do so-well, we certainly didn't stop them, our officers were present at mass slaughters of "communists" and took pictures:

    (from a repost from the Korea Times)

    http://www.korea-is-one.org/spip.php?article2161
    Also, this article from NBC:
    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24695113/ with one of the photos taken.

    Apparently, we also gunned down civilian refugees:

    http://www.korea-is-one.org/spip.php?article2522

    And I'd never heard of Cheju:

    http://www1.korea-np.co.jp/pk/036th_issue/98040102.htm
     
  15. fedr808 1100101 Valued Senior Member

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    Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
     
  16. ULTRA Realistically Surreal Registered Senior Member

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    Weaponized bugs, insects and animals all exist. They carry plague, typhus, and any number of nasty things like anthrax. Disease has been used as a weapon of war for millenia. Diseased men and cattle were catapulted over castle walls as a matter of routine. It's nothing new. Even the ebola virus (heammorhagic fever) has been weaponised, and that's just the ones i'm allowed to talk about. Obviously when I was in the Army we had to train to counter specific threats.
    They are an efficient and cheap way to wipe out masses of people.
     
  17. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    Oh, absolutely.
    I have read that the bubonic plague entered Europe via the dead bodies of troops catapulted over walls...

    What I'm just trying to find out...is did my government try this in this instance?

    I mean, there were at least two incidents of smallpox-infected blankets being given or left out for First Nations people...precedent.

    But in our country, the Korean war's much less talked over than the Vietnam war...it's almost a historical afterthought. Which is petty alarming. I'd heard about *some* shootings of civilians that compared to the rather more famous My Lai Massacre in Vietnam. But not that all civilians moving south were mowed down indiscriminately as a matter of policy.

    Basically, the most exposure I had to the Korean war in mass media is M.A.S.H.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M*A*S*H_%28TV_series%29 Which was a good show, not supportive of war...but left one with the erroneous impression that our presence in Korea was less...horrific than it was in truth?

    So.
     
    Last edited: Apr 2, 2011
  18. NCDane Registered Senior Member

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    I forgot to get back to this mess earlier.

    Wiki is only a click away. Insects are NOT cholera vectors,
    those midgie thingies being the only possible exception that
    modern medicine has some up with the entire, vast insect world.

    Furthermore, even if insects did spread cholera the tactic
    of dropping them from aircraft is blantantly absurd, regardless
    of the source of the claim.

    Finally your anti-US bigotry is offensive. You place as much
    value in a claim by North Korea, and more value in Chinese
    and Russian claims, and fall for some garbage about mass
    innoculation as though epidemics were not a serious threat
    in war-ravaged territory, and as though there might have
    been a substantial uninnoculated segment of the population
    at risk.
     
  19. NCDane Registered Senior Member

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    They exist but have rarely been used.

    The only two cases I have heard of, and they may be apocryphal,
    were by the Mongols catapulting a dead plague victim into a Genoese
    fort in the Crimea ca. 1250, and by English colonists against the
    Indians in the notorious smallpox blanket episode in the early 1600s.

    Modern militaries regrettably have had arsenals of this awful stuff.
    These arsenals have almost certainly never been used, and let us
    hope they never are. It is people like Mr. Kim of NK who most likely
    to be the first offenders, and I hope that had been drilled into the
    threadstarter by now.
     
  20. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    And visible only to you, apparently.

     
  21. NCDane Registered Senior Member

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    Take another look at exactly, precisely what I said:
    Got it?

    Now, is that or is it not a 100% fair interpretation of this:

    "What I'm wondering-
    (1) is this something my government actually tried, or
    (2) a bunch of whackadoodle made up by the CCP and North Koreans?"
    (numbering added)

    Got it?

    Take it slowly, and maybe you will get everything right on the next try.
     
    Last edited: Apr 6, 2011
  22. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    I get the secondhand impression NCDane's still acting like a douchecanoe?

    He seems to have forgotten I put him on ignore for so doing already.

    Short recall that, he might want to have that checked...

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  23. NCDane Registered Senior Member

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    You think I care if you use the pussified ignore option on me?

    Your contributions are not so brilliant that I want to see them all,
    that's for damn sure.

    And you seem to have many gallant partisans such as that guy
    with the 125k vocabulary and the unfathomable username who
    jumped in a short while ago to mount a (completely ineffective)
    defense. They can fulfill the role of adversary since you don't have
    the spine or the balls to defend yourself.
     

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