Mengele's North Korean heirs

Don't know if this Sunday Times story has been picked up widely yet:

Chilling testimony about chemical weapons experiments on North Korean prisoners has emerged as a key element in potential indictments of members of the Kim Jong-il regime for crimes against humanity.

The accounts connect North Korean scientists and factory managers with chemical warfare programmes to produce mustard gas and to test it on human victims along with decontamination techniques, protective masks and suits. . .

One woman who escaped from captivity has given US congressmen an account of female prisoners lying motionless with blood trickling from their mouths while guards in gas masks examined them.

The statement by Lee Sun-ok, who endured many years in the North Korean gulag, has been compared with some of the most graphic testimony at war crimes trials after the second world war. . .

She testified that the guards selected 150 prisoners, most of them disabled and weak women who were less valuable as labour. Then Lee, who worked as an administrative clerk, was ordered to tell the canteen to make the usual number of meals for male prisoners but 150 fewer for the women. . .

Norbert Vollertsen, a German doctor who treated famine victims in North Korea and who campaigns for regime change in Pyongyang, has won support in Washington for his argument that the way to get rid of Kim’s weapons is to end his rule.

“North Korea is a real terror state and therefore the leadership of this country has to face the international criminal court,” Vollertsen said. “As a German born after the war I know too well the guilt of my grandparents’ generation for remaining silent.”

MEANWHILE, new testimony revises our knowledge of the extent of Nazi "medical" experimentation.

UPDATE: The Feb. 1 Sunday Guardian has yet more:

In the remote north-eastern corner of North Korea, close to the border of Russia and China, is Haengyong. Hidden away in the mountains, this remote town is home to Camp 22 - North Korea's largest concentration camp, where thousands of men, women and children accused of political crimes are held.

Now, it is claimed, it is also where thousands die each year and where prison guards stamp on the necks of babies born to prisoners to kill them.

Over the past year harrowing first-hand testimonies from North Korean defectors have detailed execution and torture, and now chilling evidence has emerged that the walls of Camp 22 hide an even more evil secret: gas chambers where horrific chemical experiments are conducted on human beings.

Posted by David on January 25, 2004 10:55 AM