The scene begins with a bloodied man being lifted out of a box and placed on an operating table. Without checking his vital signs, a surgeon promptly slashes open the body and exposes the internal organs. “Grab it!” A voice commands. Then a kidney is yanked from the abdomen, placed in a fluid-filled bag, and sent on its way to be sold on the black market.
This gruesome scene is from season one, episode five of Netflix’s global hit series, “Squid Game.” If you have watched this program, then you know the bad guys are relying on organ harvesting to fund their operations.
Squid Game is a six-part fictional contest that takes place in Korea. Recruiters seek out 456 contestants and invite them to compete for a winner takes all prize of $38 million. Specifically sought are contestants who are struggling financially, deeply in debt to loan sharks, or simply down on their luck and feel they have nothing left to lose. People who desperately need the money.
After the first game begins the unsuspecting contestants are shocked to learn that losers pay with their lives. During the game, armed and masked monitors shoot to kill any contestant that makes a mistake or fails to reach the end of play. At which point, the dead and dying are carted away in wooden boxes and cremated. The boxes of those with salvageable organs are marked with a red dot and swiftly sent to the operating room.
Since the Asian-based Squid Game first aired in September, its popularity has skyrocketed worldwide. It is peculiar and sadly disturbing that in real life the media, religious leaders, human rights groups, and politicians around the globe have objected to how the Chinese communist regime has made organ harvesting a sustainable business by targeting innocent Falun Gong practitioners, defenseless dissidents, and prisoners of conscience.
Citing investigations by reputable organizations, Western corporate media outlets have hotly accused and criticized the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for its organ harvesting crimes. The UK’s Daily Mail recently suggested that China was operating a real-life Squid Game, in which the organs of Falun Gong practitioners and dissidents are harvested and sold. Korean newspapers, including the Korea Daily and Joong Ang Daily, have expressed concerns about the CCP’s inhumane practices.
Various human rights groups have reported that the CCP removes hearts, kidneys, livers, and corneas from over 100,000 dissidents and political prisoners each year and operates a ‘kill to order’ organ-trafficking network on a massive scale. The reports claim, “the international community remains powerless to stop the slaughter because the World Health Organization (WHO) is compelled to accept the totalitarian nation’s ‘inadequate and misleading’ hospital data without question.”
Korea’s Joong Ang Daily has suggested the Squid Game unexpectedly raises awareness of the CCP’s organ harvesting practices. Seoul News reports citizen complaints that China is now the biggest beneficiary of the program’s meteoric success. Chinese retailers have profited handsomely by stealing the Squid Games copyrighted merchandise and reproducing it for illegal sales. But this may eventually backfire on the communist regime since the program’s popularity has pointed the spotlight on their illegal organ harvesting.
Koreans Go to China for Organ Transplants
The Squid Game is not Korea’s first or only project that focuses on forced organ harvesting. Korea released a movie titled “Traffickers” in 2012. The movie was based on the real-life incident of a Korean woman who was kidnapped and live-organ harvested for profit by Korean triad organizations in collaboration with Chinese customs, hospitals, and police departments. TV North Korea also filmed a documentary titled “Kill to Live” in 2017. Selling organs from involuntary donors has been a controversial topic for some time.
In an interview with The Epoch Times, Lee Seung Won, president of the Korean Society for Transplant Ethics, said that in 2016, David Kilgour, former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia Pacific, and David Matas, a Canadian human rights lawyer, published their “Report on the Investigation of the Communist Party’s Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners.” The report provided evidence of the CCP’s organ-selling activities. It also stated that Koreans are most often the recipients of the organs among foreigners. It found that nearly 1,000 Koreans visit a transplant hospital in Tianjin each year to receive an organ transplant.
Lee said that there are no accurate statistics so far to confirm the numbers. Chinese authorities hide the facts and Koreans coordinate their hospital visits through unofficial channels.The Korean government has not been able to confirm the number of Koreans who receive transplants in China.
One breakthrough in substantiating the data occurred when TV North Korea was preparing to film the “Kill to Live” documentary. The investigative team managed to infiltrate the Tianjin No. 1 Central Hospital. At the time, China was claiming the hospital was not providing organ transplants to foreigners. However, Lee said the team found “there were already Korean patients receiving transplants there.” Just the day before the team arrived, eight foreigners had received transplants.
According to a survey conducted by “Kill to Live” producers, Koreans have been going to China for transplants since 2000. The TV North Korea team estimated that over 20,000 Koreans had made the trek in 10 years. This trend is likely to continue since there are currently 32,000 Koreans waiting for vital organ transplants and many are willing to pay huge sums of money. Including Tianjin, China has 169 hospitals with transplant capabilities. Eight of these hospitals are frequently visited by Korean patients.
According to Lee, “In order to get an accurate number of Koreans who received transplants in China, we are moving forward to seek cooperation with the government and plan to release the results to the international community as soon as they are available.”
Concerns of UN Human Rights Experts
In June, experts from the UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner issued a statement saying they were “extremely alarmed” by reports of alleged “forced organ harvesting” by the CCP targeting detained ethnic minorities and groups, “including Falun Gong practitioners, Uighurs, Tibetans, Muslims, and Christians.”
The statement said credible information indicates the victims are being subjected to blood tests and organ examinations without their consent. Testing results are being registered in a database of living organ sources for the purpose of future organ allocation. Involved in the systematic theft of organs were Chinese medical personnel, including surgeons, anesthesiologists, and public sector professionals.
In February 2020, the Wuxi People’s Hospital in China performed its first double lung transplant on a 59-year-old patient whose lungs were damaged by the CCP virus (that causes COVID-19). CJ Werleman, an investigative reporter for the British Byline Times, determined “the patient had to wait a mere five days for a ‘consenting’ donor to provide a perfectly matching set of lungs. This raises further questions about the scale and scope of the country’s illegal forced organ harvesting program.”
Werleman said this five-day turnaround was impossible since China has one of the lowest organ donation rates in the world, only one for every two million citizens. According to the Journal of Biomedical Research, of the 1.5 million Chinese citizens who need an organ transplant each year, fewer than 10,000 are successfully matched, a supply to demand ratio of 1:150.
In June 2019, the China Tribunal, an independent international entity in London, England, concluded that the organs of members of marginalized groups imprisoned in China have been forcibly harvested on a large scale, sometimes while the patients are still alive. The organs are used to service the rapidly growing transplant trade, which generates approximately $1 billion annually. Their verdict states that “Falun Gong practitioners have been one, and possibly the primary, source of organ supply.”
The allegations of forced organ harvesting began in 2001. At that time, the organ transplant business in China was growing rapidly, and the waiting time for organs became so short that Chinese websites advertised hearts, lungs, and kidneys for sale and even for pre-order. This suggests that victims are being killed on demand and the CCP is willing to kill its citizens for money.