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For a town entangled in a national controversy, Waegwan's streets give off an eerie languor. Ask residents in this South Korean burg about Agent Orange — the code name for a poisonous blend of herbicides that three U.S. Army veterans allege they buried near there in 1978 — and nearly all sigh wearily. The accusation isn't surprising, bemoans Chang Jung-hun, a 69-year-old melon farmer. He says South Korean politicians regularly criticize American military installations for polluting surrounding villages. The latest flare-up, which surfaced in May when the whistle-blowers aired their claims on an Arizona television program, is nothing new.

Chang would prefer that everyone in the firestorm — including the Pentagon, South Korean antimilitary activists and journalists — just leave his neighborhood alone. If outsiders play up the possibility that the defoliant was buried there with scant evidence, he and others told TIME, fruit sales and property prices drop because of contamination fears. "The issue is too sensational, and it is only hurting our town," Chang says. "Too many people are helping their own political agendas at our loss. We'll use our own local representation to get things under control."

This rural town in southeastern South Korea is witnessing the most recent eruption over the U.S. military's possible storage and disposal of Agent Orange more than 30 years ago. On July 25, Steve House, a 54-year-old former U.S. Army heavy-machinery operator, testified before the country's National Assembly that he and his colleagues buried at least 250 drums of Agent Orange at the base, known as Camp Carroll, in 1978. A coalition of activist groups paid for his trip to Seoul; he arrived two months after he and two other veterans brought forward the allegations on a TV-news station in Arizona. Last Thursday, House visited his old base, pointing out a former ditch where he claims the barrels were buried.

Accompanying House on the trip is a former Army engineer battalion captain, 63-year-old Phil Steward. He says he ordered troops to spray 300 to 500 drums of Agent Orange and other chemicals around two other bases in northeastern South Korea, where he was stationed in 1968 and 1969, in part to kill weeds around the soldiers' living quarters. Today both men, who served 10 years apart at separate bases, suffer from diabetes, neuropathy and other maladies they claim were triggered by exposure to the toxin.

The U.S. military, for its part, admits that in the late 1960s, South Korean soldiers hand sprayed 21,000 gal. (79,000 L) of Agent Orange and other herbicides across a southwestern stretch of the DMZ between South and North Korea — and, since 2000, has been doling out benefits to American veterans exposed in that area. But if the allegations further south of the border are true, the Department of Veterans Affairs may have to expand its coverage, compensating ailing veterans like House who didn't work near the DMZ.

As in other countries where it was used, Agent Orange is a touchy topic in South Korea because of the widespread and long-term risks it poses to people's health. The defoliant contains dioxins, toxic compounds linked to 15 serious conditions such as cancers, nerve disorders and birth defects. It's a heated issue that has been playing out for more than three decades — primarily in Asia; once contaminating parts of Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, it gained notoriety when U.S. forces sprayed as much as 18 million gal. (68 million L) of it in Vietnam during the 1960s and early 1970s to defoliate forests, depriving guerrilla soldiers of concealment. About 400,000 Vietnamese have died or been disabled because of exposure, according to the Vietnamese government, while 500,000 children have been born with defects associated with the toxin.

Aside from witnesses' accounts, the evidence so far of an Agent Orange disposal in Camp Carroll is dubious. In mid-June, responding to House's television interview, South Korean and U.S. authorities found small amounts of dioxin in three streams near Camp Carroll. The traces weren't dangerous, and Korean authorities said they do not believe that they come from Agent Orange, though the state investigation team says more comprehensive findings will be released before the end of the summer.

Other Defense Department documents could shed some light on how even that small amount of dioxin got there. A significant number of herbicides and pesticides were buried at the base in 1978 and then excavated during the next two years, though Agent Orange is not listed among them, says an Army environmental survey from 1992. In an investigation in 2004, an Army contractor found safe levels of dioxins at the base, similarly dampening the possibility that Agent Orange drums were present.

Nevertheless, the controversy has revived deep-rooted suspicions that many South Koreans harbor against American military bases. While the governments of South Korea and the U.S. enjoy warm relations, many individual lawmakers and activists charge that American installations contribute disproportionately to pollution in surrounding communities, while shirking cleanup costs. In the past 20 years, American forces have committed 47 known cases of pollution, says Green Korea, a Seoul-based environmental group known for its crusades against the bases. Whether they are legally responsible for that pollution, however, is debated. The Status of Forces Agreement, a 1966 bilateral treaty that defines the legal rights and responsibilities of U.S. troops in South Korea, does not clearly stipulate that the U.S. military must completely clean up pollution and pay these costs, says Lee Jang-hee, a law professor at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.

But even activists say they were surprised at the about-face in the Army's public-affairs strategy after multiple pollution-related blunders in the past two decades, says Kim Hye-jin, a campaigner at Green Korea. The Defense Department formed a joint investigation team to look into House's allegations with government officials in uncharacteristic haste, and then kept the public informed by releasing old documents. "It was unusual that the commander of the 8th Army appeared so quickly on the radio," says Kim, referring to a broadcast on May 26 by Lieut. General John D. Johnson, the commander of all American troops in South Korea. But, she adds, "the statements are not sincere."

In earlier debacles, Kim says, the Army took a more opaque approach, slowly and reluctantly publicizing the results of investigations to allay outcries — a tactic that usually backfired when activists filled in the information vacuum with conspiracy theories. Those gaffes fueled protests against U.S. forces that climaxed in the early 2000s, a time when the U.S. appeared to be losing leverage in its South Korean military alliance. The most well-known calamity came in 2000, when a U.S. Army mortician ordered his South Korean assistant to pour 20 gal. (76 L) of formaldehyde, a cancer-causing compound used for preserving bodies, down the sink, leading it to flow through a major river in Seoul. Following widespread demonstrations, the mortician was tried and imprisoned for six months under South Korean law, even though an Army investigation declared the sink disposal to be within safe limits and following reasonable procedure. By the mid-2000s, the environment again became a sticky point when Washington handed over several military installations to Seoul, which petitioned the U.S. government to clean up high levels of soil pollution at the bases, to little avail.

In the past three years, amid tensions with North Korea, South Korean politics has taken a conservative swing in favor of the U.S. military presence. The Army's brisk and transparent response to House's allegations has helped calm contamination worries, but that isn't quelling fears for many elderly South Koreans who were exposed to heavy dioxin doses as conscripts in the DMZ and in the Vietnam War, or for today's post–Cold War youngsters who are usually more receptive to anti-American calls. Nonetheless, "it's hard to argue persuasively that the U.S. is trying to hide something," says Katharine Moon, a political-science professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

And even though protests will likely continue, they aren't all arising from anti-Americanism. Rather, activism has gained popularity in South Korea because of political changes enacted in the mid-1990s, Moon says. Before that era, Seoul lawmakers handpicked mayors and governors, making them more likely to follow the capital's stance on Washington. Today, South Koreans elect their own local representatives, giving them a more popular mandate to maneuver against American bases and the national government. That's an asset, says Chang, the melon farmer, who's happy to have some voice in shaping the U.S.–South Korea military alliance, even if a small one.

• Geoffrey Cain / WAEGWAN
• A rural town in southeastern South Korea is witnessing the most recent eruption over the U.S. military's possible storage and disposal of Agent Orange more than 30 years ago