I saw in 1990 a television series Korea the
Unknown War produced by Thames Television
(London) and WGBH (Boston) in which a Hungarian
journalist, Tibor Meray was interviewed. He was in Korea in
1952. I contacted WGBH and asked where Meray was today?
Noone knew. When in London in 1992 I contacted Thames
Television and asked the same question. I received the same answer.
In 1993 I called on the phone The Hungarian Association of Journalists in Budapest. I found out that Meray emigrated in 1956 to France and resided in Paris. I have a schoolfriend in Paris. By chance she knew
a Hungarian who knew Meray. Now I had his telephone number, so I have called him on the phone. Meray said that in
1952 he was in Korea and published a series of reports in the Hungarian journal Szabad Nep which were reprinted in France in Franc Tireur. He was in
Korea together with a
Polish journalist from Warsaw, Lucjan Pracki.
I found Prackis telephone number in the New York Public Library and called him. Pracki told me that in 1952
he published a series of reports from Korea in Soldier
of Freedom which were included in a book Military
Correspondent Reports from Korea. I asked him if he would send me the book to New York? He agreed. I met Pracki
on my visit to Poland in 1994.
Most of the reports were available in the Library of Congress. The most important were two reports describing incidents of cholera in Pyongyang and Dai Dong.
The incident in Pyongyang occured on March 6 and was published in Warsaw on March 25. The incident in Dai Dong
occurred on May 17 and was published in Warsaw on June 14. Both incidents were filled with improbablilities and impossibilities clear to medical experts such as Hirszfeld
and Szymanowski. They had to conclude that biological warfare in Korea did not occur.
If Agatha Christie was still alive she could write
one more mystery book.
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