CIA Used 25 North Korean POWs in Korean War Tests
Declassified CIA records show that Korean war prisoners in American custody were used in early MK-ULTRA testing, including 25 unnamed North Korean POWs identified in an October 1950 account as the first test subjects. The files add direct evidence that Project Bluebird and its early successors moved from interrogation planning into experiments on prisoners held by the United States.
The newly released papers also show how narrow the program was meant to be at the start. An April 5, 1950 memorandum addressed to CIA Director Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter said knowledge of Project Bluebird “should be restricted to the absolute minimum number of persons,” and outlined three-person interrogation teams built around a doctor, a hypnotist and a polygraph technician.
Project Bluebird and Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter
The April 5 memo laid out goals, required training and a $65,515 budget, including $18,000 for “Transportation.” It said the teams would use the polygraph, various drugs and hypnotism “for personality control purposes,” language that places the program closer to coercive behavior control than ordinary questioning.
One year later, a CIA meeting write-up noted “a project in Japan and Korea in which the Army had used a polygraph operator along with a team of psychiatrists and psychologists on Korean POWs.” That record ties the early program not just to theory, but to prisoner testing in the field.
25 North Korean POWs in October 1950
John Marks’s 1979 book, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” described 25 unnamed North Korean POWs as the first test subjects in October 1950. Marks wrote that the goal was “controlling an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against such fundamental laws of nature as self-preservation.”
Those prisoners were subjected to polygraph tests and planned for other invasive testing. The records do not present the program as a one-off experiment; they show a sequence of memoranda and planning notes that moved from Bluebird’s organization into more intrusive techniques.
Hypospray devices and covert methods
A February 2, 1951 memo asked about acquiring six “hypospray” devices, described as experimental instruments designed to covertly inject sedatives through the skin via “jet injection.” The same memo requested investigation into modifying a “tear gas pencil” and other “devices of unestablished action,” including the “German ‘Scheintot’ [sic] (appearance of death) pistol.”
The National Security Archive released the declassified documents between December 2024 and April 2025 through its collection, “CIA and the Behavioral Sciences: Mind Control, Drug Experiments and MK-ULTRA.” The archive says the collection “brings together more than 1,200 essential records on one of the most infamous and abusive programs in CIA history.”
For readers tracking the history of the Korean war and later CIA conduct, the immediate change is not a new allegation but a new documentary base. The first hard proof now sits in public records: 25 North Korean POWs, an early Bluebird budget, and memos describing drugs, hypnotism and covert injection tools in American custody.
