Page 2 of 2 North Korea and the poor
man's bombs By Bertil Lintner
as
human guinea pigs to test chemical weapons. One of
the worst - and clumsiest - examples of an attempt
to show such evidence was provided in early 2004
by the otherwise well-respected British
Broadcasting Corp (BBC) in a documentary called
Access to Evil, which was shown in several
countries.
Over the years, several
refugees have reported that political prisoners
are used for vivisection experiments, to test new
surgical techniques, and new
medicines and other chemical agents. The BBC film
claimed that the smoking gun had been found: a
"letter of transfer" from the local State Security
Agency of a labor camp called "Camp 22" saying,
"The above person is transferred to the security
agency ... for the purpose of human
experimentation of liquid gas for chemical
weapons." The letter included the test subject's
name, sex, date of birth, place of birth, and
place of residence.
Camp 22, which is also
called Hoeryong after the North Hamyong county
where it is located, is indeed a well-known labor
camp that even many outsiders have heard about.
The document was marked "Top Secret", and was
signed by an official. It also had a stamp affixed
to it from the State Security Agency. But critical
eyes - among them Yonhap, South Korea's official
news agency, which is not noted for being
sympathetic to the North - immediately noted that
the printed text on the document appeared faded
while the text written in pen was much less
damaged.
The paper was not of the type
normally used in North Korea, and Yonhap, as well
as other South Korean sources, also pointed out
that the direct translation of the agency in
question that had been stamped the document was
"the National Protection Division" or, in Korean,
the Kukga-bowi-bu.
Between 1982 and 1993,
that was the correct name of the agency in charge
of, among other things, the country's labor camps.
The problem was that this letter was dated
"February 13, 91 Juche", or 2002, nine years after
the name of the agency had been changed to
National Security Protection Division, or
Kukga-anjeon-bowi-bu. South Korea's
intelligence agencies reached the conclusion that
the letter was most probably written, or dictated,
by a North Korean refugee who had fled before 1993
and therefore was unaware of the name change.
It was, of course, not entirely impossible
that the person who signed the order had used an
old stamp. But in strictly controlled North Korea,
where every civil servant is afraid of making
mistakes, that was deemed extremely unlikely by
South Korean sources.
In combination with
other discrepancies in the documentation, it
became quite clear that the question whether
political prisoners have been used in experiments
with biological and chemical weapons remains
unanswered. But any attempt to find out the truth
has been severely hampered by the BBC's highly
dubious report.
What is known, however, is
that North Korea has bought, or has tried to buy,
large quantities of sodium cyanide from China,
Thailand and Malaysia. This toxic chemical can be
used to make sarin nerve gas - or to manufacture
fertilizer, or in industrial plating. North Korea
is also known to have been shopping for phosphorus
pentasulfide, a key ingredient in VX, a nerve
agent that was invented in Britain in the 1950s.
On September 25, 2004, the South Korean
Customs Service submitted a report to a lawmaker
from the Grand National Party stating that South
Korea had exported 73,925 tons of sodium cyanide
to China and 3,540 tons to Malaysia since 1998. In
both cases, some of the chemicals were reportedly
re-exported to North Korea.
At the time,
Malaysian authorities declined to name the
Malaysian company that had acted as a middleman
for North Korea. They only said they were "looking
into an allegation that a Malaysian company had
... shipped some 40 tons of the chemical
substance, of which 15 tons came from South
Korea". A total of 107 tons was alleged to have
been shipped to North Korea via Chinese middlemen.
Since that incident in 2004, there have
been no further reports of chemicals reaching
North Korea via Malaysian middlemen or
Malaysia-based companies.
In 2003,
following a tip-off from South Korean
intelligence, the Thai customs authorities blocked
a North Korea-bound shipment of sodium cyanide -
but otherwise Thailand appears to have become
North Korea's main base for the procurement of
dual-use chemicals.
According to the Thai
Customs Department's official website, North Korea
imported 12.9 million baht's (US$370,000) worth of
phosphinates in 2006, which can be used as
inoffensive anti-static coatings on polyethylene -
and for pre-treatments against nerve-agent
intoxication. North Korea also bought 844,221
baht's ($25,000) worth of sodium peroxide from
Thailand, which can be used to bleach wood pulp
for the production of paper - or to recycle
plutonium from refractory residues.
Take
your pick: the North Koreans have become masters
in dealing in dual-use products, which makes it
almost impossible to prevent sensitive materials
from reaching Pyongyang's defense industries.
But there is also reason to be cautious.
Hazel Smith, a British professor and a senior
program officer at the United Nations University
in Tokyo, wrote in the March 2004 issue of the
highly respected Jane's Intelligence Review:
"Recent inquiries in the US and the UK into
alleged intelligence failures regarding the
existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction
have highlighted shortcomings in the way
information is used and conclusions are drawn by
Western intelligence agencies. There is a danger
that the same errors could be repeated in North
Korea."
Most evidence, however, suggests
very strongly that North Korea possesses both a
chemical- and a biological-weapons program,
although, as the IISS states in its report, "they
may differ in terms of scope and state of
advancement". But North Korea's record of half a
century of known research - and documented
evidence of the procurement of dual-use chemicals
- cannot be ignored. And, if pressed hard by
outside forces, it may not hesitate to use its
"poor man's atomic bomb".
Bertil
Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far
Eastern Economic Review. He is currently a writer
with Asia-Pacific Media Services.
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