10 July 2015
A North Korean expert on biochemical weapons defected to Finland last month, carrying gigabytes of human experiment results with him, a source said Thursday.
The 47-year-old researcher, identified only by his surname Lee, at a microbiology research center in Ganggye, Chagang Province, bordered by China to the north, fled to the European country on June 6 via the Philippines, said the source from a North Korean human rights group.
“His ostensible reason for defection is that he felt skeptical about his research,” the source told Yonhap News Agency. Lee held a data storage device with 15 gigabytes of information on human experiments in order to bring North Korea’s inhumane tests to light, according to the source. The North Korean defector will give testimony before the European parliament later this month.
The scientist reached Finland via the Philippines after fleeing his country because he ‘felt skeptical about his research’, reports The Telegraph. In a groundbreaking development, he is said to have escaped North Korea with a data storage device carrying vasts amount of information on humans being used to test biological and chemical weapons.
This is not the first time reports have surfaced of North Korea carrying out weapons tests on its own people. One of the country’s special forces officers, who fled in the 1990s, said he was left traumatised after children with mental and physical disabilities were used in chemical weapons tests as part of his training.
The officer, Im Cheon-yong, broke the revelations to South Korean intelligence officials, saying it was the final straw which led to him defecting. In a 2014 interview with The Telegraph, Mr Im said, “If you want to graduate from this academy, you need to learn how to confuse the enemy without revealing your own forces, how to carry out assassinations, how to use chemical weapons and so on.”
“And then we have what they call ‘field learning. For the biological and chemical warfare tests, we needed ‘objects. At first, they used the chemical agents on mice and showed us how they died. Then we watched the instructors carrying out the tests on humans to show us how a person dies. I saw it with my own eyes.” Mr Im claimed at least three military-run facilities were used to conduct these gruesome tests – including one set alongside a political prison camp near the city of Hyanghari.
Last year, defectors claimed North Korea was systematically purging its disabled population by making them disappear from public sight, subjecting them to chemical weapons tests and castrating them. Another defector told of a government programme where disabled people are reportedly sent for medical experiments such as ‘dissection of body parts’.
In terms of chemical weapons, anthrax bacterium is frequently sampled – along with as many as 40 other similar substances cooked up by government researchers. Last year, Pyongyang was said to have carried out at least a dozen large-scale exercises testing biological and chemical weapons. A South Korean military officer said the exercises were clearly drills using chemical weapons in an attacking manner.
A 2014 report suggested that the North devotes a significant portion of its resources to producing and testing such weapons. The report was produced by 38 North, a website run by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Based on interviews with North Korean defecting soldiers, the nation is easily capable of producing 4,500 tons of chemical agents each year – but can almost triple this figure at full capacity. The study also cited former prison inmates and guards, who claimed such agents were also tested on political prisoners at concentration camps. Shockingly, the paper also suggested North Korea had provided chemical weapons technology to Syria, Egypt, Iran and Libya in the last two decades.
North Korea is already the subject of UN sanctions and it is unknown what more can be done to prevent the reported use of its citizens in biological and chemical weapons tests.