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Scientist Says N. Korea Tests Chemicals on Prisoners
North Korea routinely tested chemical agents on political prisoners in preparation for a possible attack on South Korea, a former scientist for that country said in an interview televised Tuesday (see GSN, March 3). Identified only as “Dr. Kim” to protect the identities of relatives still in North Korea, the researcher told the BBC’s Newsnight program that the experiments were aimed at determining how much toxic gas was needed to destroy Seoul, according to Agence France-Presse. “The purpose of this experiment was to determine how long it takes for a human being to die when x amount of gas is put into x cubic meters of space,” said Kim, who defected two years ago. Kim described how he and party officials watched a series of prisoners suffer excruciating deaths, adding that he was under orders to conduct the experiments. “In a country like North Korea when the state tells you what to do, you are supposed to follow orders,” he said. “Now, when I think of the death of that (first) political prisoner I feel like a war criminal,” he added. Such stories are difficult to verify given that outside access to North Korea is highly restricted, AFP reported. Officials in Pyongyang have denied the allegations. However, Kim’s account was strikingly similar to that of Kwon Hyok, a North Korean prison camp guard who defected to South Korea in 1999 who was interviewed for a BBC documentary that aired in February, according to AFP. There was no evidence the two had ever heard each other’s testimony, according to the BBC (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 28).
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