A BBC program says North Korea is killing political prisoners in experimental gas chambers and testing new chemical weapons on women and children.
Titled Access to Evil and scheduled to be aired yesterday, the program features an official North Korean document that says political prisoners are used to test new chemical weapons.
In a statement, the BBC said the documentary included comments by Kwon Hyuk, a new name given to a former military attache at the North Korean embassy in Beijing and chief of management at Prison Camp 22.
Using a drawing, he describes a gas chamber and the victims he says he saw at the prison in the northeast of the secretive communist state, near the Russian border.
"I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber. The parents, a son and a daughter. The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save the kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing," he said.
"Normally, a family sticks together [in the gas chamber] ... and individual prisoners stand separately around the corners. Scientists observe the entire process from above, through the glass."
Asked how he felt about the children, he said: "It would be a total lie for me to say I felt sympathetic about the children dying such a painful death. Under the society and the regime I was in at the time, I only felt that they were the enemies. So I felt no sympathy or pity for them at all."
North Korean officials in London were unavailable to comment. BBC journalist Olenka Frenkiel said she had three independent confirmations that Kwon Hyuk was genuine.
The human rights group Amnesty International said it had been unable to confirm previous reports of such testing.
"We have heard of these allegations but we cannot confirm them," a spokeswoman said.
North Korea -- described by US President George W. Bush as part of an "axis of evil" because of a nuclear weapons program and an authoritarian system -- has denied accusations of human rights abuses.
A top-secret North Korean document also says political prisoners are used for "human biological experimentation and for production of biological weapons," the BBC said.
It interviews a person said to be a former prisoner in North Korea who had been ordered to poison others.
"An officer ordered me to select 50 healthy female prisoners. One of the guards handed me a basket full of soaked cabbage, told me not to eat it but to give it to the 50 women," Sun Ok-lee said, according to the BBC statement.
"All who ate the cabbage leaves started violently vomiting blood and screaming with pain. It was hell. In less than 20 minutes, they were quite dead," Sun said.
Frenkiel said she had also seen other official North Korean documents, one of which referred to the transfer of a prisoner "for the purpose of human experimentation of liquid gas for chemical weapons."
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi yesterday lavished US President Donald Trump with praise and vows of a “golden age” of ties on his visit to Tokyo, before inking a deal with Washington aimed at securing critical minerals. Takaichi — Japan’s first female prime minister — pulled out all the stops for Trump in her opening test on the international stage and even announced that she would nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize, the White House said. Trump has become increasingly focused on the Nobel since his return to power in January and claims to have ended several conflicts around the world,
UKRAINE, NVIDIA: The US leader said the subject of Russia’s war had come up ‘very strongly,’ while Jenson Huang was hoping that the conversation was good Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and US President Donald Trump had differing takes following their meeting in Busan, South Korea, yesterday. Xi said that the two sides should complete follow-up work as soon as possible to deliver tangible results that would provide “peace of mind” to China, the US and the rest of the world, while Trump hailed the “great success” of the talks. The two discussed trade, including a deal to reduce tariffs slapped on China for its role in the fentanyl trade, as well as cooperation in ending the war in Ukraine, among other issues, but they did not mention
REASSURANCE: The US said Taiwan’s interests would not be harmed during the talk and that it remains steadfast in its support for the nation, the foreign minister said US President Donald Trump on Friday said he would bring up Taiwan with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) during a meeting on the sidelines of the APEC Summit in South Korea this week. “I will be talking about Taiwan [with Xi],” Trump told reporters before he departed for his trip to Asia, adding that he had “a lot of respect for Taiwan.” “We have a lot to talk about with President Xi, and he has a lot to talk about with us. I think we’ll have a good meeting,” Trump said. Taiwan has long been a contentious issue between the US and China.
GLOBAL PROJECT: Underseas cables ‘are the nervous system of democratic connectivity,’ which is under stress, Member of the European Parliament Rihards Kols said The government yesterday launched an initiative to promote global cooperation on improved security of undersea cables, following reported disruptions of such cables near Taiwan and around the world. The Management Initiative on International Undersea Cables aims to “bring together stakeholders, align standards, promote best practices and turn shared concerns into beneficial cooperation,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said at a seminar in Taipei. The project would be known as “RISK,” an acronym for risk mitigation, information sharing, systemic reform and knowledge building, he said at the seminar, titled “Taiwan-Europe Subsea Cable Security Cooperation Forum.” Taiwan sits at a vital junction on
RSS