U.S. death toll from Korean War revised downward, Time reports

June 4, 2000
Web posted at: 7:39 p.m. EDT (2339 GMT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The Pentagon says a clerical error mistakenly added more than 20,000 noncombatant deaths to the toll of U.S. dead in the Korean War, Time Magazine reported on Sunday.

The Pentagon has revised the number of U.S. soldiers killed during the war from 54,246 to 36,940, the magazine said.

The higher figure has been quoted since shortly after both sides declared a truce in 1953.

Time said the Pentagon blamed the error on a government clerk, who mistakenly added the 20,617 nonbattlefield military deaths that occurred worldwide during the three-year conflict to the more than 33,000 U.S. battlefield fatalities.

But only 3,275 of those nonbattlefield deaths occurred in Korea, the Pentagon said, and most of them were from accidents or disease.

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