Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 15:57, 4 October 2010

There have been reports of North Korean human experimentation. These reports show human rights abuses similar to those of Nazi and Japanese human experimentation during World War II and the United States throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. These allegations of human rights abuses are denied by the North Korean government, who claim that all prisoners in North Korea are treated humanely.

Allegations

The human rights charity Christian Solidarity Worldwide details on its website allegations of chemical experiments done to political prisoners, and an apparent eyewitnesses report about seven people who died in two gas chambers, including a mother who held her youngest child as she died.

2004 BBC report

A BBC television programme on February 1, 2004, with the title, Access to Evil in the This World series, detailed other allegations.

In the programme, a former North Korean woman prisoner, Lee Soon Ok tells how 50 healthy women prisoners were selected and given poisoned cabbage leaves, which all the women had to eat despite cries of distress from those who had already eaten. All 50 were dead after 20 minutes of vomiting blood and anal bleeding. Refusing to eat would allegedly have meant reprisals against them and their families.

Kwon Hyok, a former prison Head of Security at Camp 22, described laboratories equipped respectively for poison gas, suffocation gas and blood experiments, in which three or four people, normally a family, are the experimental subjects. After undergoing 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 the earlier account of a family of seven, Kwon Hyok 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.

An interview with Kim Sang Hun, described as a distinguished human rights activist, was also broadcast. Kim Sang Hun showed documents that he says were brought from Camp 22 by an escapee and which he is sure are not forgeries. These documents each say that a certain prisoner is to be transferred for experimentation with chemical weapons. A London based expert on Korea also considers it likely that the documents are genuine and Kwon Hyok stated independently that such documents were used at Camp 22.

North Korea refuses access by any outside observers to Camp 22.

Other reports

Lee Soon Ok, another North Korean defector, and one of the few to have escaped from life imprisonment in an "Absolute Control Area" through China to South Korea. In her original defector's testimony, her US Senate testimony and her prison memoir Eyes of the Tailless Animals (ISBN 0-88264-335-5) she recounted witnessing two instances of lethal human experimentation. Allegedly, her account is backed by satellite photographs, but how such events were seen has not been disclosed.

Former prison guard Ahn Myung Chul has reported that prisoners were used for "medical operation practice" for young doctors. According to him, these doctors would practice surgery on prisoners, without anesthesia.

See also

• Declaration of Helsinki of ethics for research involving human subjects
• List of Korea-related topics
• Camp 22, North Korea
• Korean Central News Agency
• Prisoner abuse
• Unethical human experimentation in the United States

References

1. Olenka Frenkiel (January 30, 2004). "Within prison walls". BBC News. Retrieved 2009-12-15.
2. "Testimony of Ms. Soon Ok Lee". United States Senate. June 21, 2002. Retrieved 2009-12-15.
3. Ahn Myung Chul (January 18, 2006). "Prisoners Used for Medical Operation Practice". DailyNK. Retrieved 2009-12-15.

External links

• "Former guard: Ahn Myong Chol North Korean prison guard remembers atrocities."
• "A survivor: Soon Ok Lee 7 years of torture in N. Korean prison camp."
• "Child prisoner: Kang Chol Hwan North Korean imprisoned at age 10 for grandparents’ dissent."
• "Death, terror in N. Korea gulag NBC News investigation uncovers horrific, extensive atrocities."
• Video testimonials by former guards and prisoners at Camp 22, where the experiments are said to have occurred, with Google Earth images Camp 22 and other camps.
• U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea - The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps (includes satellite photos of the known camps)
• Revealed: the gas chamber horror of North Korea's gulag by Antony Barnett, February 1, 2004 Guardian Unlimited
• Human guinea pigs BBC News
• Within prison walls, by Olenka Frenkiel, BBC News
• Congress Wants UN to Look at N. Korea's Human Rights Abuses
• Auschwitz Under Our Noses, by Anne Applebaum, February 4 2004, The Washington Post
• IISS report
• U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea - The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps (includes satellite photos of the known camps)
• DPRK civilians admit faking papers on chemical weapons testing on humans at a press conference in Pyongyang, publication of People's Daily, an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
• Truth behind False Report about "Experiment of Chem. Weapons on Human Bodies" in DPRK Disclosed (North Korean Central News Agency)

• Human rights in North Korea
• Torture in North Korea
• Human experimentation by country