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2 North Korea and the poor man's
bombs By Bertil Lintner
BANGKOK - A key step in the solution to
the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula may be
in sight as the North Korean Foreign Ministry said
on Monday that it is ready to shut down the
nuclear reactor at Yongbyon north of Pyongyang as
soon as its funds in a Macau bank, which have been
frozen since late 2005, have been released.
But even if that happens, North Korea will
still have an impressive arsenal of weapons of
mass destruction (WMD). According to US
North Korea expert Joseph S
Bermudez, the country at present "produces
indigenously, and possesses the capability to
effectively employ throughout the Korean
Peninsula, significant quantities of chemical
weapons".
North Korea is also believed to
have stockpiled significant quantities and
varieties of biological weapons, which, together
with chemical weapons, are often referred to as
"the poor man's atomic bomb". If deployed in
warfare, they can be as devastating as a nuclear
device.
And, unlike nuclear reactors that
can be easily detected by satellites, North
Korea's chemical- and biological-weapons
facilities are mostly underground. Furthermore, it
is not difficult to obtain dual-use chemicals -
components with military as well as civilian
applications, the sale of which is not necessarily
restricted by international agreements and control
regimes.
North Korea's front companies in
the region - primarily, it seems, in Thailand -
are supplying the regime in Pyongyang with vital
ingredients for its defense industries.
According to the London-based
International Institute for Strategic Studies
(IISS), North Korea's arsenal of chemical weapons
may include blister agents such as mustard gas and
lewisite, the choking agents phosgene and
diphosgene, the vomiting agent adamsite, cyanide
in the blood agents, and nerve agents such as VX,
sarin, tabun and soman.
Much less is known
about its biological-weapons agents, but according
to reports by prominent defectors from North
Korea, its industries have experimented with
bacteria and viruses for anthrax, cholera, bubonic
plague, typhoid fever, typhus, tuberculosis,
smallpox, and yellow fever.
The IISS also
states in a report dated January 2004 that,
although its is difficult to determine exactly
what kind of chemical and biological munitions
have been stockpiled, "North Korea is capable of
using a variety of delivery systems to disseminate
chemical agents, including artillery, multiple
rocket launchers, mortars, aerial bombs and
missiles."
North Korea's chemical-weapons
research began in 1954 when Pyongyang, in the wake
of the Korean War, established a directorate
called the Chemical Bureau to develop a defense
against chemical weapons as well as to provide
doctrinal provisions for deployment of
chemical-warfare troops. Each airfield in North
Korea was provided with decontamination equipment
and detection systems derived from Soviet and
Chinese designs, and partly supplied by those two
countries.
In 1961, North Korean leader
Kim Il-sung issued a "Declaration of
Chemicalization", which called for greater efforts
to develop chemical-production facilities. As a
result, the IISS report says, North Korea
developed the capability to produce "a number of
dual-use chemicals such as compounds of phosphate,
ammonium, fluoride, chloride and sulfur that could
be diverted from civilian chemical uses to support
a chemical-weapons program".
In 1981 - 20
years after Kim Il-sung's declaration - the
Chemical Bureau was transformed into the Nuclear
Chemical Defense Bureau and placed under the
direct control of the General Staff Department of
the Ministry of the People's Armed Forces. Its
mandate was extended to include the management and
development of defensive measures in the event of
nuclear, biological and chemical attacks.
In recent years, North Korea is known to
have sent personnel from this bureau to Russia,
Ukraine, France and Austria to study nuclear
facilities in those countries, and to procure
equipment necessary for its own WMD program.
North Korea has not signed the Chemical
Weapons Convention (CWC) and is not expected to do
so, as it requires intrusive inspection and
verification, which the authorities in Pyongyang
would never accept. Since 1997, the South Korean
government has insisted that the North join the
CWC, but to no avail.
On the other hand,
North Korea did in 1987 accede to the Biological
Toxin and Weapons Convention - although an open
press release in the early 1990s referred to
"military biotechnology work" at numerous medical
institutes and universities in the country.
The production of chemical weapons
reportedly takes place in the Ganggye Chemical
Weapons Factory in Chagang province and in the
Sakchu Chemical Weapons Factory in North Pyongan.
Both factories - which consist mostly of
underground facilities - are controlled by the
Equipment Department of the Nuclear Chemical
Defense Bureau. Chemical weapons are field-tested
on islands in the Yellow Sea, off the coast of
northwestern North Korea. Causeways link some of
those islands with the mainland - but no buildings
can be seen on them from the air.
But
there is no credible evidence to back up a claim
by South Korean and other activists that political
prisoners have been used
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
