A true evil disregarded?

While the US remains almost exclusively focused with the occupation of Iraq – a mission that has become increasingly clear to most was never required. The Bush administration deals with N. Korea as if their continuing WMD programs and severe human rights violations are under control when in fact they are accelerating. North Korea continues to proliferate missile technology, develop its nuclear capabilities, and experiment with WMD technologies on humans. Not only do they do this in out in the open for the world to see they also threaten their enemies with the use of these outlawed technologies. How can our current administration in any sense justify the war in Iraq when North Korea flaunts its ‘evil’ for the world to see?

Revealed: the gas chamber horror of North Korea's gulag

A series of shocking personal testimonies is now shedding light on Camp 22 - one of the country's most horrific secrets

Antony Barnett
Sunday February 1, 2004
The Observer

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.

Witnesses have described watching entire families being put in glass chambers and gassed. They are left to an agonising death while scientists take notes. The allegations offer the most shocking glimpse so far of Kim Jong-il's North Korean regime.

Kwon Hyuk, who has changed his name, was the former military attaché at the North Korean Embassy in Beijing. He was also the chief of management at Camp 22. In the BBC's This World documentary, to be broadcast tonight, Hyuk claims he now wants the world to know what is happening.

'I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber,' he said. 'The parents, son and and a daughter. The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing.'

Hyuk has drawn detailed diagrams of the gas chamber he saw. He said: 'The glass chamber is sealed airtight. It is 3.5 metres wide, 3m long and 2.2m high_ [There] is the injection tube going through the unit. Normally, a family sticks together and individual prisoners stand separately around the corners. Scientists observe the entire process from above, through the glass.'

He explains how he had believed this treatment was justified. 'At the time I felt that they thoroughly deserved such a death. Because all of us were led to believe that all the bad things that were happening to North Korea were their fault; that we were poor, divided and not making progress as a country.

'It would be a total lie for me to say I feel 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.'

His testimony is backed up by Soon Ok-lee, who was imprisoned for seven years. 'An officer ordered me to select 50 healthy female prisoners,' she said. '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. I gave them out and heard a scream from those who had eaten them. They were all screaming and vomiting blood. 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.'

Defectors have smuggled out documents that appear to reveal how methodical the chemical experiments were. One stamped 'top secret' and 'transfer letter' is dated February 2002. The name of the victim was Lin Hun-hwa. He was 39. The text reads: 'The above person is transferred from ... camp number 22 for the purpose of human experimentation of liquid gas for chemical weapons.'

Kim Sang-hun, a North Korean human rights worker, says the document is genuine. He said: 'It carries a North Korean format, the quality of paper is North Korean and it has an official stamp of agencies involved with this human experimentation. A stamp they cannot deny. And it carries names of the victim and where and why and how these people were experimented [on].'

The number of prisoners held in the North Korean gulag is not known: one estimate is 200,000, held in 12 or more centres. Camp 22 is thought to hold 50,000.

Most are imprisoned because their relatives are believed to be critical of the regime. Many are Christians, a religion believed by Kim Jong-il to be one of the greatest threats to his power. According to the dictator, not only is a suspected dissident arrested but also three generations of his family are imprisoned, to root out the bad blood and seed of dissent.

With North Korea trying to win concessions in return for axing its nuclear programme, campaigners want human rights to be a part of any deal. Richard Spring, Tory foreign affairs spokesman, is pushing for a House of Commons debate on human rights in North Korea.

'The situation is absolutely horrific,' Spring said. 'It is totally unacceptable by any norms of civilised society. It makes it even more urgent to convince the North Koreans that procuring weapons of mass destruction must end, not only for the security of the region but for the good of their own population.'

Mervyn Thomas, chief executive of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, said: 'For too long the horrendous suffering of the people of North Korea, especially those imprisoned in unspeakably barbaric prison camps, has been met with silence ... It is imperative that the international community does not continue to turn a blind eye to these atrocities which should weigh heavily on the world's conscience.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/korea/article/0,2763,1136483,00.html


North Korea offers Nigeria missile deal

By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

North Korea has offered to sell Nigeria advanced missile technology, the Nigerian government said yesterday, prompting the United States to warn its African ally that it might face sanctions if it strikes a deal with Pyongyang.

Nigerian officials yesterday issued vague and contradictory statements about their intentions and the missile type on offer, although they acknowledged seeking ballistic-missile technology for "peaceful" purposes.

A sale would mark the first time that such technology has been introduced into sub-Saharan Africa, raising the prospect of a costly new arms race among some of the world's poorest and least-stable nations.

A North Korean delegation "came to us wanting a memorandum of understanding signed with us toward developing missile technology, and training and manufacture of ammunition," a spokesman for Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar was quoted as saying.

The delegation, led by Yang Hyong-sop, vice president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, discussed the proposal with Mr. Abubakar during a five-day visit to Abuja, the Nigerian capital.

The spokesman, Onukaba Ojo, was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying that a memorandum would be signed soon.

The state-run News Agency of Nigeria also said that Mr. Abubakar had "expressed an interest in signing a defense pact with North Korea on the grounds that the Asian country was developed in that area."

Full article:

http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040128-114425-6730r.htm

 

Taking a second look at this thread I suppose I could have done a better job of conveying my thoughts, but at the same time i'm not sure that is possible. What does the world do with a country like North Korea? We've kept them isolated in a box for decades, however it is very clear that they are emerging on to the world stage in a major way.

Reading about human test subjects in gas chambers I can only find one parallel, which of course is Nazi Germany albeit on a much smaller scale. We've known about these types of atrocities for decades, but have done nothing substantive to stop them. Is this because we have no vested interest in North Korea because they have nothing to offer us or is it the fact that starting another war on the Korean peninsula would be catastrophic?

I don't believe it's really fair to point the finger at the Bush administration for not taking action against NK, unless you take into consideration the statements and actions they taken against Iraq. North Korea continues to do everything Iraq may or may not have been doing – well the North Korean government I should say. Perhaps the fact that they have the means to back their threats keeps the rest of the civilized world from ending the misery in North Korea. Who knows…

 

I believe that Saddam was an atrocious human no doubt, but I believe much of his perceived threat to the world was trumped up. Particularly when you compare his government to what is going on in NK. They have the technology and the means to create a true threat and they appear to be doing just that.

It's almost like looking at North Korea as a drug producer and Iraq as a drug dealer or even to a lesser extent a drug buyer. It's fairly easy to take out a dealer or a buyer, but to really stop the problem you have to grab the producer. If you don’t they will just continue to find more dealers and buyers for their old, but effective weapons – Nigeria being a perfect example. Taking out Iraq a weapon buyer may be the best we can do though, because a war on the Korean peninsula may be something our military cannot handle at this time.

There has to be a greater scheme to taking out Iraq and leaving N. Korea alone to basically do as they please…