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One of the most difficult issues that came up in our refugee surveys concerned allegations that North Korean prisoners had been used in medical experimentation. The accounts are suggestive but obviously hard to confirm, much less easily lend themselves to assessment of how widespread such practices might be.
Last weekend I had the good fortune to read a pre-publication version of former Washington Post reporter Blaine Harden’s forthcoming book Escape from Camp 14, the astonishing story of Shin dong-hyuk, possibly the only person to have been born and raised in a prison camp and escaped to tell. It is a mind-bending tale. The book is scheduled for release early next year.
One episode in the book particularly caught my attention. One evening in November 2004, four secret police, including two that Shin did not recognize, paid an unannounced visit to the prisoners’ nightly self-criticism meeting. They explained that they were concerned about lice, and asked for ten prisoners to bathe themselves in what they were told was a new treatment, a cloudy liquid described as smelling like agricultural chemicals. Over time, the prisoners developed high fevers and boils on their skin, which began to putrefy and slough off. They were eventually loaded onto a truck and were never seen again.
Medical experimentation.
