Few remember how America’s 31 May 1951 OPERATION STRANGLE in the Korean War…

…dropped 600K tons of bombs on DPRK and 2 million civilians perished. It had reverse effect of expected and cauterized resistance.

However, one person who definitely remembered was double-agent for the Soviet Union George Blake, one of the most well-known yet least connected stories to such “cauterized resistance”.

Blake emphasized to the press…

…that he decided to switch sides after seeing civilians massacred by the “American military machine.” “I realized back then that such conflicts are deadly dangerous for the entire humankind and made the most important decision in my life – to cooperate with Soviet intelligence voluntarily and for free to help protect peace in the world”.

Here’s another version of events:

…despatched to Seoul in 1950, to set up an anti-Soviet operation on Moscow’s eastern flank…the North Koreans invaded the South and Blake, like many other western diplomats, was interned – and during his three-year period of captivity he changed sides. George Blake was no “Manchurian Candidate”, tortured and brainwashed into working for the communists while a prisoner of war. it was, he insisted, the spectacle of a helpless civilian population being attacked by mighty US bombers that had changed his world-view: “It made me feel ashamed of belonging to these overpowering, technically superior countries fighting against what seemed to me quite defenceless people.” He quietly informed his KGB captors that he was ready to work for them. In 1953, Blake and his fellow detainees were at last released and he returned to London as an SIS hero.

This UK “hero” was then caught spying for the Soviets (due to a Polish intelligence officer).

The suspected spy was unmasked by a tip from a defecting Polish intelligence officer who told the CIA that two Soviet agents were operating in Britain, one at a royal navy research centre, the other in SIS. They were codenamed Lambda-1 and Lambda-2. Quickly, Lambda-1 was identified as Harry Houghton, but it was months before Blake, then on temporary assignment in Lebanon to learn Arabic, became the prime suspect for Lambda-2.

He confessed and pleaded guilty, was sentenced to a long jail term but soon escaped (with the help of Irish inmates perhaps enamored with Soviet life) from “maximum security” to the open arms of Russia where he continued to intentionally put hundreds of people in harms way.

Dozens are alleged to have been executed in Russia from his actions, and he denied responsibility for their lives while simultaneously taking credit and awards.

He has just died aged 98, feted by Russia.