SEOUL — 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, said he obtained the letters from a top engineer who was working at the chemical complex.
"I am absolutely convinced [the letters] are genuine, no doubt about it," Kim said. He carefully studied the paper and the 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 can neither confirm nor disprove the papers' authenticity.
Kim intends to release the letters Wednesday at a news conference in London along with written statements from the engineer.
The engineer, 57-year-old Kang Byong Sop, 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, Thailand, was assaulted Jan. 25 in an incident that human rights advocates said 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 has known members of the family for years and was instrumental in persuading the engineer to take the letters.
"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 existence of the documents was first reported this month by the British Broadcasting Corp.
The allegations, which evoke images of the gas chambers used in the Holocaust, have sparked renewed calls for international scrutiny of the North Korean gulag, which is believed to house about 200,000 people.
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 them. 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.
