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North Korea has large chemical weapons stockpile: Seoul

SEOUL — North Korea has up to 5,000 tonnes of chemical weapons, South Korean experts said on Friday (Feb 24), including the toxin used to assassinate its leader’s half-brother.

Troops in chemical warfare garb during a joint United States-South Korean military drill. Photo: AFP

Troops in chemical warfare garb during a joint United States-South Korean military drill. Photo: AFP

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SEOUL — North Korea has up to 5,000 tonnes of chemical weapons, South Korean experts said on Friday (Feb 24), including the toxin used to assassinate its leader’s half-brother.

Traces of VX – a nerve agent listed as a weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations – were detected on swabs from the face and eyes of Kim Jong-Nam, who was poisoned at a Kuala Lumpur airport last week, Malaysian police said on Friday.  

Malaysian detectives are holding three people – women from Indonesia and Vietnam, and a North Korean man – but want to speak to seven others, four of whom are believed to have fled to Pyongyang.

South Korea's defence ministry said in its 2014 Defence White Paper that the North began producing chemical weapons in the 1980s and estimated the reclusive state has about 2,500 to 5,000 tonnes in stock.

According to the 2012 edition of the Defence White Paper, North Korea has chemical weapons production facilities in eight locations, including the north-eastern port of Chongjin and the north-western city of Sinuiju.

“North Korea is believed to have a large stockpile of VX, which can easily be manufactured at low cost,” defence analyst Lee Il-woo at the private Korea Defence Network told AFP.

Developed some 100 years ago, VX can be produced at small laboratories or facilities producing pesticides, he said.

“Chemical and biological weapons can be delivered through various means such as artillery, missiles and planes,” he added. 

If absorbed through the skin, eyes or nose, just a tiny drop of the colourless, odourless nerve agent is enough to fatally damage a victim's central nervous system.

Military science professor Kim Jong-Ha at Hannam University said the North has 16 kinds of nerve agents, including VX and sarin.

Sarin was used by the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo in the 1995 attack at the Tokyo subway system that killed 12 people.

North Korea also possesses other lethal chemicals, including suffocating, blistering and blood agents, Prof Kim said, as well as 13 types of biological weapons such as anthrax and bubonic plague.

North Korea has not signed a global chemical weapons convention that prohibits the production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons.

More than 160 countries signed the treaty that went into force in 1997. AFP

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