‘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.’