“Bedbug Found in 20 years” says the Korea Times.

Really? For the very first time in 20 years? What’s more, they’re American bed bugs:

The researchers concluded that the species is from the U.S.

“The woman started living in the house about nine months before the biting incident after coming back from a long-term stay in New Jersey. Other rooms where the bugs were found have also been rented mainly to foreigners or Korean-Americans,” [Yonsei University Professor Yong Tai-soon] said.

Part of me wants to stay awhile considering this little media pay-back scenario. For years, some in the U.S. have been saying that there were no bed bugs here, unh-uh, that they came from overseas, brought by immigrants and people who “tolerate” bed bugs.

When Israel discovered the bed bug resurgence, they, too, mostly blamed foreign travel. (See also this study, A Case of Imported Bedbug (Cimex lectularius) Infestation in Israel, KY Mumcuoglu (2008), PDF.)

The truth is likely a lot more complex. We actually know very little with any certainty about bed bugs and their history. But suggestions of eradication in industrialized societies (or however you want to think of them) have been largely exaggerated and simply do not hold up under scrutiny.

When microbiologists John Paul and Janice Bates, writing in the BMJ in April 2000, worried about 4 separate instances of bed bug samples submitted for identification, they were apparently unaware of the significant numbers of recorded bed bug infestations in the UK in the 1980s.

Tick tock, tick tock.

Update 1/20/09: Nobugs finds the story of the putative first case in the bedbugger forums.