Merrill Newman was a member of the Korean War 8240th Army Unit, which operated anti-communist Korean "partisans" in North Korea, most in the western part of the country. See below the declassified US Army review of these operations. You can also see the CIA's review of broader special operations during the Korean War, conducted by the Combined Command Reconnaissance Activities (CCRAK). 8240th ops are discussed here as well.
This topic is not just sensitive in North Korea; the US government still refuses to declassify 50-year-old and older records relating to this topic from during and the years soon after the Korean War. See an example below of a 1955 report; we requested it earlier this year and the US National Archives says it is still properly classified. We have spent years trying to get some of these files released, mostly because of the information they hold on American POWs kept by the communists after the Korean War (see www.kpows.com).
US-sponsored clandestine action in North Korea did not end with the Korean War Armistice in 1953. In other worlds, the US and its South Korean allies kept sending agents into North Korea years after the war (as the North Koreans were sending their agents the opposite direction). For Pyongyang, Mr. Newman’s efforts might be seen as the early part of a long-running operation…one that is in some ways still going on.
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