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....
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