Four crumpled pieces of paper smuggled last year out of North Korea have raised anew long-standing allegations that chemical weapons are being tested on political prisoners.
The documents are purported letters of transfer for inmates to be sent from one of North Korea’s most infamous prison camps to a chemical complex in South Hamgyong province for “the purpose of human experimentation for liquid gas.”
Kim Sang Hun, a respected South Korean human-rights advocate, says he obtained the letters from a top engineer who was working at the chemical complex.
“I am absolutely convinced they [the letters] are genuine, no doubt about it,” Kim said. He carefully studied the paper, handwriting and official seal on the documents before deciding to release them, he said.
The documents have sparked a vigorous debate in Seoul within a small coterie of North Korea experts and defectors who say they cannot confirm the papers’ authenticity.
Kim intends to release the letters Wednesday at a news conference in London, along with written statements from the engineer about how he took the letters and what he witnessed while working at the chemical plant.
The engineer, Kang Byong Sop, 57, was arrested last month in China along with his wife and son as they attempted to flee from North Korea to Laos. Their whereabouts are unknown. Another son, who had been working in Bangkok, was assaulted Jan. 25 in an incident that rights advocates say was linked to North Korean agents.
“We believe this family has been identified and targeted by North Korea for having brought out the letters,” said Kim, who plans to appeal for the family’s safety at the news conference. Kim said he has known members of the family for years and that he was instrumental in persuading the engineer to take the letters from the factory.
“This is a case of a brave North Korean who has risked his and his family’s lives to inform the world of these horrendous crimes against humanity,” he said.
The allegations, which evoke images of the gas chambers used in the Nazi Holocaust, have renewed calls for international scrutiny of the North Korean gulag, which is believed to house about 200,000 people. The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center asked the United Nations to investigate, and human-rights advocates are demanding that the issue be discussed along with the North Korean nuclear program at six-nation talks to be held this month in Beijing.
Human-rights organizations have been frustrated for years in their attempts to investigate the treatment of political prisoners in North Korea. Although there are clear satellite images of the camps, the country’s authoritarian regime does not allow foreigners to visit inmates. As with allegations about the North Korean nuclear weapons program, defectors may be motivated to exaggerate or forge documents to obtain money or win asylum for their families.
The gassing allegedly took place at one of North Korea’s largest chemical complexes, the February 8 Vinalon Factory in Hamhung, which is believed to produce synthetic fibers, agricultural feed and insecticides as well as nerve gas and blistering and choking agents.
In his statement, Kang claimed to have been the chief electrical engineer, a position that gave him access to visit remote corners of the compound for emergency repairs. He said it was known that prisoners would arrive by trucks about twice a month and disappear into a secluded annex about 4 miles away from the main complex. On one occasion, when he was fixing a broken power line he saw a chamber about the size of a large freezer.
“I saw human hands scratching a round glass window inside a chamber that was locked with a heavy metal door,” Kang said in the statement.
Kang said that last July he was in a State Security Agency office that had stacks of documents referring to prisoners. He snatched a handful of papers off a desk, crumpled them into a ball and threw them into the wastebasket. He later took the basket and hid the papers in his clothing.
The documents essentially are form letters in which someone wrote the names, dates of birth and addresses of prisoners who were being sent for experimentation with chemical weapons. They bear the seal of the No. 22 prison camp, a facility for dissidents in North Korea’s far north, about 200 miles from Hamhung.
