The Military

By Mark Tompson/Washington

A half-century after the Korean War, THE PENTAGON has just revised the number of Americans killed in the conflict, from 54,246 to 36,940. It seems that the higher figure--endorsed by the Encyclopaedia Britannica and engraved on the five-year-old KOREAN WAR VETERANS MEMORIAL on the National Mall in Washington--cropped up shortly after both sides declared a truce in 1953 and has been repeated, erroneously, ever since.

The "primary culprit" for the error was an anonymous government clerk, the Pentagon says. The bureaucrat mistakenly added all nonbattlefield U.S. military deaths--20,617--that occurred worldwide during the three-year conflict to the more than 33,000 U.S. battlefield dead in Korea. But only 3,275 of those nonbattlefield deaths--largely due to accidents or disease--occurred in Korea. That yields the new, revised U.S. death count for the war. In a rare example of interservice cooperation, a Pentagon memo notes, "All service historian offices have been advised...and are in agreement with the revision."

--By Mark Tompson/Washington