Does North Korea have “Nazi Gas Chambers?”

Investor's Business Daily is a widely read and very influential mainstream financial publication in the United States. In the February 11, 2004, issue, p. A 14, there is an editorial about the North Korean Communist regime of Kim Jong-Il. The story it tells is strikingly similar to the “Hitler-Nazi gas chamber” legend of WWII.

The editorial claims that his government has apparently adopted the “Nazi gas chamber” method of mass murder. Supposedly, Kim has a secret “murder camp,” Camp 22, set up in North Korea's northeastern corner. There also seems to be a somewhat similar North Korean counterpart to the German Rudolf Höß, once commandant of Auschwitz who, according to legend, supervised killings in the Hitler gas chambers. This counterpart goes under the name of “Kwon Hyuk,” and he allegedly was “chief of management” of the camp. He supposedly escaped to the west and told his story to the western media.

In a BBC documentary Kwon Hyuk claimed:

In terminology that vaguely mirrors the “eyewitness” descriptions of the “Nazi gas chambers.” Hyuk explained:

He added:

Just like the German scientists and SS men that allegedly looked through the “peepholes” in the Majdanek and Auschwitz “gas chambers”!

The article claims that Kim “gasses to death” opponents of his regime and Christians, as well as their relatives, just as the Nazis “mass gassed” Jews and opponents of National Socialism. The article adds:

The Investor's Business Daily editorial also states that documents smuggled out of the country “show” that prisoners are transferred to “murder Camp 22” for the purpose of human experimentation with liquid gas for chemical weapons. (Another mirror image of the Josef Mengele saga?)

Recently, the ADL has urged the United Nations to take action. Their press release reads as follows:[1]

Aside from the BBC documentary, the Investor's Business Daily editorial, and the ADL press release, I have not read or heard any more about this in the U.S. media. Revisionist scholar Dr. Robert Faurisson has informed me that in his native France there is very little press coverage of the whole issue. It is as if journalists do not really believe the story.

In regard to this North Korean “Nazi gas chamber” issue, revisionist publisher and publicist Bradley Smith commented:

He has “hit the nail on the head,” as there are two ways to look at it.

On the one hand, the Bush administration views this North Korean Stalinist regime as a threat to world peace and security. It very well could be that the CIA and other western intelligence organizations are simply recycling the propaganda myths from WWII that reaped benefits for the Allied powers. That is, this may be part of a “propaganda offensive” before the U.S. and other western nations take diplomatic and/or military action against North Korea. These intelligence organizations may think that if they can make the masses of people believe that the North Koreans are using gas chambers to commit mass murder, then this will help build up public support for diplomatic and/or military action against Kim's regime.

To cut a long story short, the North Korean “Nazi gas chambers” could indeed be propaganda inventions of western intelligence organizations like the CIA.

But on the other hand, consider this: Holocaust revisionists have shown beyond a reasonable doubt that the WWII homicidal “Hitler gas chambers” are indeed a propaganda myth. Yet, this does not necessarily mean that the story of the North Korean gas chambers is also a myth. The totalitarian regime of Kim seems to be a carbon copy (but in miniature) of the brutal and evil Communist regime of Joseph Stalin. Just as the Soviet dictator Stalin and his murderous cronies killed masses of people in their Gulags, it is certainly conceivable that Kim has copied Stalinist methods and does have some type of program to murder dissidents and opponents. It is indeed possible that the North Korean Communists are murdering their opponents through starvation, forced labor, and exhaustion in their North Korean prison camps, just as Stalin murdered innocents and his opponents in the Soviet concentration camps.

It has never been stated, however, that the North Koreans copied “Nazi gas chamber technology” and are using Zyklon B, hydrogen cyanide, the exhaust from Russian tanks, or bottled carbon monoxide for their “gas chambers.” It could be that the North Koreans are testing some type of new, modern-day military gas that could be used in a future war. It is at least possible that some evil and mad group of North Korean scientists built a gas chamber with modern day technology, and are using it to test some unknown type of gas on dissidents.

My conclusion is this: Since this story has some obvious implications for the revisionist movement, we should follow it closely. It could very well turn out to be a modern-day case study of how atrocity propaganda is created and used for political and military purposes. But then again, maybe there is a kernel of truth to the whole thing. We revisionists should remain very skeptical of this North Korean “Nazi gas chamber” story, but we should also retain an open mind. We should demand hard evidence before we accept any of these atrocity stories. If western governments really do have good reason to believe that North Korea is guilty of atrocities, then they should show their people the evidence so we may take appropriate action. But they should not embellish the truth with lies for the purpose of drumming up support for their political and military policies. The only thing this does is undermine the people's confidence in the western democratic system of government.

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