Human experimentation in North Korea

Human experimentation in North Korea is an issue raised by some North Korean defectors and former prisoners. They have described suffocation of prisoners in gas chambers, testing deadly chemical weapons, and surgery without anesthesia.[1]

Sources

Human experimentation was described by several North Korean defectors, including former prisoner Lee Soon-ok, former prison guards Kwon Hyok and Ahn Myung Chul, and others.[2] In Lee's testimony to the U.S. Senate[3] and in her prison memoir Eyes of the Tailless Animals (published in 1999) she recounted witnessing two instances of lethal human experimentation. An episode of the BBC television programme This World[4][5] detailed some of the allegations.[6] The claims have been described as "very plausible" by a senior US official quoted anonymously by NBC News.[7]

Testing of deadly poisons

Lee described an experiment in which 50 healthy female prisoners were selected and given poisoned cabbage leaves. All of the women were required to eat the cabbage, despite cries of distress from those who had already eaten. All 50 died after 20 minutes of vomiting blood and anal bleeding. Refusing to eat the cabbage would allegedly have meant reprisals against them and their families.

Kwon Hyok, who has stated he was a former head of security at Camp 22, described laboratories equipped with glass gas chambers for suffocation gas experiments, in which three or four people, normally a family, are the experimental subjects.[1][8] After the people undergo medical checks, the chambers are sealed and poison is injected through a tube, while scientists observe from above through glass. In a report reminiscent of an earlier account of a family of seven, Kwon claims to have watched one family of two parents, a son and a daughter die from suffocating gas, with the parents trying to save the children using mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for as long as they had the strength. Dr. Kim, a chemist who led these experiments before defecting from North Korea, confirmed these reports and stated that the experiments' purposes included observing the poison gas's effects on victims' mental state and determining how much gas would be needed to kill everyone in an area.[5]

Kwon's testimony was supported by documents from Camp 22 describing the transfer of prisoners designated for the experiments; the documents were identified as genuine by Kim Sang Hun, a London-based expert on Korea and human rights activist. Toxicologist Alastair Hay stated that Kim's testimony is detailed and scientifically accurate enough that it is likely to be true.[5] A press conference in Pyongyang, organized by North Korean authorities, denounced the allegations and claimed that the corroborating documents had been forged.[9][10] Shin Eon-sang, South Korea's Assistant Minister for Unification Policy, stated that "[t]he authenticity of the evidence is difficult to assess" because North Korean defectors' "claims are in most cases exaggerated."[5] Kwon's account was also questioned by the Yonhap News Agency based in South Korea, which argued he had never served in a political prison and had no access to the information he claimed.[11][12] Kwon and Kim claim that the South Korean National Intelligence Service told them not to talk about North Korean human experimentation to avoid harming South Korea's relations with North Korea, and harassed them and denied them passports when they refused.[5]

Other experiments

Former prison guard Ahn Myung-chul has reported that young doctors practice surgeries on prisoners without anesthesia.[13] He also described deliberate efforts to study physical resistance by starving prisoners to death. According to him, "The people who carry out these executions and these experiments all drink before they do it. But they are real experts now; sometimes they hit prisoners with a hammer, on the back of the head. The poor prisoners then lose their memory, and they use them as zombies for target practice. When the Third Bureau is running out of subjects, a black van known as 'the crow' turns up and picks out a few more prisoners, sowing panic among the rest. The crow comes about once a month and takes forty or fifty people off to an unknown destination."[14]

See also

  • Illicit activities of North Korea
International

References

  1. 1 2 Antony Barnett, "Revealed: the gas chamber horror of North Korea's gulag", Guardian Unlimited, January 1, 2004, archived March 14, 2018, at archive.today.
  2. ↑ David Hawk, The Hidden Gulag, Second Edition (Washington, DC: Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2012), archived May 11, 2021, at the Wayback Machine.
  3. ↑ Soon Ok Lee, "Testimony of Ms. Soon Ok Lee", Hearings & Meetings, United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, June 21, 2002, archived September 22, 2008, at archive.today.
  4. ↑ Olenka Frenkiel, "Within prison walls", BBC News, January 30, 2004, archived May 25, 2012, at archive.today.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Olenka Frenkiel, "Human guinea pigs", BBC News, July 28, 2004, archived July 13, 2012, at archive.today.
  6. ↑ Anne Applebaum, "Auschwitz Under Our Noses", The Washington Post, February 4, 2004, archived October 23, 2010, at archive.today.
  7. ↑ Robert Windrem, "Death, terror in N. Korea gulag", NBC News, October 24, 2003, archived June 6, 2021, at archive.today.
  8. ↑ Joshua Stanton, "Holocaust Now: Looking Down Into Hell at Camp 22", FreeKorea.us, published February 18, 2007, last modified April 2012, archived May 30, 2012, at archive.today.
  9. ↑ "DPRK civilians admit faking papers on chemical weapons testing on humans at a press conference in Pyongyang", People's Daily, an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, March 31, 2004, archived July 9, 2012, at archive.today.
  10. ↑ "Truth behind False Report about 'Experiment of Chem. Weapons on Human Bodies' in DPRK Disclosed", Korean Central News Agency, state news agency of North Korea, March 30, 2004, "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2005-10-28. Retrieved 2005-12-13.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  11. ↑ Song, Jiyoung (13 October 2015). "Why do North Korean defector testimonies so often fall apart?". The Guardian. NK News. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  12. ↑ Song, Jiyoung. "Unreliable witnesses". Asia & the Pacific Policy Society. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  13. ↑ Ahn Myung Chul, "Prisoners Used for Medical Operation Practice", Daily NK, January 18, 2006, archived January 20, 2013, at archive.today.
  14. ↑ Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, Stéphane Courtois, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, 1999, hardcover, 858 pages, ISBN 0-674-07608-7, page 557
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