North Korea ‘building up biological arsenal’

North Korea is genetically engineering the ingredients for biological armaments to produce bacteria, viruses and toxins as part of a germ warfare programme, the United States has said.

A US State Department report warns that the reclusive state has developed sprays and “poison pens” as a means of spreading deadly diseases.

Kim Jong-un’s nuclear programme has long absorbed international attention, but the report, which monitors foreign governments’ compliance with arms control obligations, confirms the existence of what some experts believe is a greater danger: weapons designed to target the state’s enemies with the likes of anthrax and smallpox.

Intelligence, military and civilian specialists in the US and South Korea believe that North Korea has developed a significant arsenal of biological weapons that could cause terror and chaos in the event of war.

North Korea “also has the capability to genetically engineer biological products”, the report added.

“Pyongyang probably is capable of weaponising [biological weapons] agents with unconventional systems such as sprayers and poison pen injection devices.”

Kim has never publicly admitted having biological weapons, and reliable intelligence from inside the country is difficult to obtain. North Korea has been a party to the Biological Weapons Convention since 1987, but evidence over the years suggests that it has the scientific capability, and the will, to manufacture biological weapons.

As early as the 1980s the country’s founding leader, Kim Il-sung, observed that “poisonous gas and bacteria can be used effectively in war”. In 1993 James Woolsey, head of the CIA at the time, confirmed a conclusion reached by Russia’s intelligence agency that North Korea was using its universities and medical institutes to research anthrax, cholera, bubonic plague and smallpox, and testing biological weapons on offshore islands. Defectors have reported testing on political prisoners, although such testimonies are impossible to confirm.

Unlike nuclear warheads, germ weapons can be made in laboratories that also perform harmless medical and biological research.

Diplomats at the United Nations in New York have struggled to monitor the sanctions imposed on North Korea by the UN Security Council for its nuclear and ballistic missile testing.

The so-called Panel of Experts has issued regular reports naming companies and governments that have allowed breaches of sanctions, by negligence or collusion, but the renewal of its mandate, which expires at the end of the month, has been blocked by Russia. It supported the sanctions when they were first imposed – but now it is using North Korean weapons to fight its war in Ukraine.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, was in Seoul this week to discuss the problem with the South Korean government.