North Korea tests bio-arms on disabled, political prisoners

Biological Weapons Overview

An examination of open-source data finds varying assessments concerning North Korea and its purported capabilities in biological weaponry. These estimates can range from North Korea having a rudimentary biological warfare (BW) program, to actual possession of biological weapons already deployed. One recent South Korean Ministry of Defense analysis released to the public have concluded that, without positing which ones, North Korea has weaponized 1-2 BW agents. General Thomas A. Schwartz, Commander of U.S. Forces in Korea (USFK), stated in testimony before the U.S. Senate in March 2002 that "...North Korea has the capability to develop, produce and weaponize biological warfare agents."

According to defector Ch’oe Ju Hwal, a former sergeant in the Korean People's Army, there exists a "Joint Research Institute" that is responsible biological weapons development. This institute is placed within the military-medical department, under command of the General Rear Service Bureau of the Ministry of People’s Armed Forces. Another report suggests a biological research facility associated with the North Korean BW program is located in Sŏngch’ŏn County (成川畈), South P’yongan Province, perhaps near Onjŏng-ri (溫井郲) (also the reported location of a Nuclear and Chemical Defense Bureau training site since 1992). Growth media is reportedly supplied (200 tons per annum) by a facility in Munch’on, Kangwon Province.

NBC News investigation uncovers horrific, extensive atrocities

Jan. 15, 2003 - In the far north of North Korea, in remote locations not far from the borders with China and Russia, a gulag not unlike the worst labor camps built by Mao and Stalin in the last century holds some 200,000 men, women and children accused of political crimes. A month-long investigation by NBC News, including interviews with former prisoners, guards and U.S. and South Korean officials, revealed the horrifying conditions these people must endure — conditions that shock even those North Koreans accustomed to the near-famine conditions of Kim Jong Il’s realm.

“It's one of the worst, if not the worst situation — human rights abuse situation — in the world today,” said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., who held hearings on the camps last year. “There are very few places that could compete with the level of depravity, the harshness of this regime in North Korea toward its own people.”

Satellite photos provided by DigitalGlobe, which first appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review, confirm the existence of the camps, and interviews with those who have been there and with U.S. officials who study the North suggest Brownback’s assessment may be conservative.

At one camp, Camp 22 in Haengyong, some 50,000 prisoners toil each day in conditions that U.S. officials and former inmates say results in the death of 20 percent to 25 percent of the prison population every year.

....

“I saw so many poor victims,” she said. “Hundreds of people became victims of biochemical testing. I was imprisoned in 1987 and during the years of 1988 through ’93, when I was released, I saw the research supervisors — they were enjoying the effect of biochemical weapons, effective beyond their expectations — they were saying they were successful.”

She tearfully described how in one instance about 50 inmates were taken to an auditorium and given a piece of boiled cabbage to eat. Within a half hour, they began vomiting blood and quickly died.

President Bush told author and Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward last year that he was well aware of the camps and the atrocities. That, officials say, partly explains why Bush insisted on North Korea’s inclusion in the “axis of evil” in his 2002 State of the Union address.

North Korea: The Bigger (Non-Nuclear) Threat

Watching the United Nations Security Council grind its way to a compromise resolution on North Korea, it's hard to avoid returning to one question: What took them so long to do something about North Korea's weapons of mass destruction? Over the past 45 years, North Korea has assembled a huge arsenal of mass casualty weapons - namely biological and chemical weapons.
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The consensus among weapons inspectors, intelligence analysts, academics and others I have interviewed—–which is backed up by the available open source material—-is that North Korea has developed anthrax, plague and botulism toxin as weapons and has extensively researched at least six other germs including smallpox and typhoid. It is also believed to have 5,000 tons or more of mustard gas, sarin nerve agent and phosgene (a choking gas). The Center for Nonproliferation Studies says North Korea ranks "amongst the largest possessors of chemical weaponry in the world." South Korea's military estimates half of North's long-range missiles and 30 percent of its artillery are CBW capable.
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So why have we done nothing? Apparently, we have fallen prey to what former weapons inspector Christopher Davis has dubbed "nuclear blindness", which he defines as "the tunnel vision suffered by successive governments, brought on by the mistaken belief that it only the size of the bang that matters."

Perhaps because of the Iraq WMD debacle the United States feels unable to press the case on this aspect of North Korea's arsenal. But there's a crucial difference: It's essentially undisputed that North Korea actually has these weapons.
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Yes, the new resolution 1718(2006) includes a reference to biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, but only as an afterthought, and the resolution exists only because of the nukes and their perceived threat.

for reference- RESOLUTION 1718 (2006) and Deadly Maps

So the question begs?... WHY are BW's so ignored in the face of facts, but they do a little Nuke test and the world goes haywire.
Something really is amiss.

Originally posted by XphilesPhan
I wont believe it...remember what british intelligence said last time about WMDs in Iraq? I wont buy it until its confirmed by another source.

Originally posted by soficrow
Straight-up disinformation.
Planting the seeds to blame the coming flu pandemic on terrorists.
Wotta crock.

Originally posted by soficrow
PAH.

Straight-up disinformation.

Planting the seeds to blame the coming flu pandemic on terrorists.

Wotta crock.

Originally posted by xmotex
I have little faith in Joseph Farah, "G2", or WND, but just because they say "the sky is blue" doesn't mean it's really green. These kinds of reports have been prety consistent, from multiple sources.

I wont buy it until its confirmed by another source.

Straight-up disinformation.
Planting the seeds to blame the coming flu pandemic on terrorists.
Wotta crock.

It doesn't look good to be using this type of propaganda ...
I believe that the propaganda is not needed to justify possible actions on NK.
They should keep the propaganda information to themselves ...

Never mind a pandemic - the poop is hitting the fan all over the place.
brb - phone

Originally posted by smirkley

Anyone got even any scraps of info that may suggest the topic set forth by myself has any element of Disinfo or propaganda?

Within prison walls

Camp 22 is one of a network of prisons in North Korea modelled on the Soviet Gulag where hundreds of thousands of prisoners are held.

Most of them have been charged with no crime. They are there because of the "Heredity Rule".

"In North Korea, " Kwon Hyok explains, "political prisoners are those who say or do something against the dead President Kim Il-sung, or his son Kim Jong-il. But it also includes a wide network of next of kin. It's designed to root out the seeds of those classed as disloyal to North Korea."

In prison, says Kwon Hyok, "there is a watchdog system in place between members of five different families. So if I were caught trying to escape, then my family and the four neighbouring families are shot to death out of collective responsibility."

But Kwon Hyok had something else he wanted to tell.

He says he witnessed chemical experiments being carried out on political prisoners in specially constructed gas chambers.

There have been many rumours of human experimentation on political prisoners in North Korea. But never has anyone offered documentary proof. Until now.

In Seoul I met Kim Sang-hun, a distinguished human rights activist.

He showed me documents given to him by someone else completely unrelated to Kwon Hyok. He told me the man had recently snatched them illicitly from Camp 22 before escaping.

They are headed Letter Of Transfer, marked Top Secret and dated February 2002 . They each bear the name of a male victim, his date and place of birth. The text reads: "The above person is transferred from Camp 22 for the purpose of human experimentation with liquid gas for chemical weapons."

I took one of the documents to a Korean expert in London who examined it and confirmed that there was nothing to suggest it was not genuine.

But I wanted to run a check of my own with Kwon Hyok. Without showing him the Letter of Transfer, I asked him very specifically, without prompting him in any way.

"How were the victims selected when they went for human experimentation? Was there some bureaucracy, some paperwork?"

"When we escorted them to the site we would receive a Letter of Transfer," he said.

Sadly, as long as these reports continue from defectors, and as long as the North Korean government continues to deny all allegations of human rights abuse, while refusing to allow access to its prisons, such allegations cannot be dismissed or ignored.

Nikkei up 0.1 pct, N.Korea worries weigh

"Buying continued in large-cap blue-chip stocks as they are seen as the earnings driver here," said Kenichi Hirano, operating officer at Tachibana Securities.

"But I can feel gloom in the mood given the possibility of another nuclear test" by North Korea, he said.

Kim Sang Hun

Born in North Korea, Kim, 70, moved to Seoul in 1946. His father, a Protestant minister, had been tortured for opposing Japanese colonial rule—a family ordeal that gave Kim strong sympathy for the abused and respect for defiance. He studied history at Seoul's Yonsei University, worked at the British embassy in Seoul, then joined the U.S. relief organization care in the 1960s. In 1975 he became a staff member at the United Nation's World Food Programme, which sent him to help refugees in Sudan and on the Thailand-Cambodia border, and a year later he became a volunteer for Amnesty International. When he retired in 1994, Kim turned his attention to North Korea. Dipping into his savings to finance trips to the border area of northeast China, he conducted lengthy interviews with defectors there, compiling detailed and chilling accounts of the horrors of North Korea's prison camps. He decided he had to get directly involved in helping these witnesses to the North Korean gulag reach safety in South Korea.

Originally posted by smirkley
Anyone got even any scraps of info that may suggest the topic set forth by myself has any element of Disinfo or propaganda?

Originally posted by smirkley

Common Sofi,... give me at least ONE link from reputable source to back up your claim of disinfo....