The threat North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme poses to the world is well known. But as the hermit kingdom actively expands its weapons arsenal, and international institutions struggle to contain it, we shouldn’t ignore its development of chemical and biological weapons either.
A recent report from the United States State Department asserts that North Korea has a ‘dedicated’ biological weapons programme, which it could use against the militarily-superior US and South Korea. Concerningly, the report highlights North Korea’s ability to produce bacteria, viruses, and other toxins which could be used as biological weapons agents.
We have already seen evidence of Pyongyang’s unabashed usage of chemical weapons, especially in highly public places. Who can forget when, in February 2017, Kim Jong Nam, the half-brother of Kim Jong Un, was assassinated by VX nerve agent whilst in Kuala Lumpur International Airport?
Unlike its nuclear and chemical weapons programmes, however, much less is known about North Korea’s biological weapons capabilities. Instead of disclosing information about these capabilities, state media has preferred to make spurious statements denouncing the US for its past involvement with biological weapons. These unevidenced claims have included criticising the US military’s alleged usage of biological weapons during the Korean war or accusing the US of targeting North Korea with anthrax after the US erroneously sent an anthrax sample to South Korea in 2015. Months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, too, Pyongyang lashed out at Washington for operating biological laboratories in Ukraine and thereby catalysing the spread of monkeypox. It’s no surprise that Russia made the same accusation.
Yet, in 2015, the North Korean regime gave us a rare insight into its possible bioweapons ambitions, when state media lauded Kim Jong Un’s visit to the Pyongyang Bio-technical Institute. Whilst the North Korean regime emphasised that the facility was producing new insecticides to enhance agricultural production, the possibility of North Korea producing biological weapons, not least anthrax, became increasingly plausible. Nine years on, and Pyongyang’s bioweapons capabilities will likely have improved. The Covid-induced shutdown of the country, for over three years, would only have contributed to accelerating any indigenous development of new types of weapons of mass destruction beyond nuclear weapons.
Whilst we may not know much about North Korea’s bioweapons capabilities, looking at the country’s earlier ventures into acquiring nuclear weapons can offer a useful, if worrying, lesson. After signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1985 – thereby renouncing its right to develop nuclear weapons – North Korea continued to assert that it had neither the intention nor the means to go down the nuclear route. History, however, tells a different story. In gross violation of its Treaty commitments, North Korea was, in fact, actively joining clandestine proliferation networks with Pakistan, Syria, and Iran, in order to develop highly-enriched uranium.
A similar situation exists with respect to bioweapons. Together with the likes of Russia, China, Iran, and Iraq, North Korea may be a signatory to the Biological Weapons Convention, but much like its fellow rogue states, it has frequently been deemed to have violated its commitments to the Convention by operating covert bioweapons programmes. And, given its past behaviour in relation to nuclear and chemical weapons, the possibility that North Korea is collaborating with like-minded partners to develop bioweapon technology should not be ruled out. We need only to look at North Korea’s previous transfer of tiles, valves, and thermometers to assist Syria’s production of chemical weapons.
At a time when the United Nations Security Council remains powerless to constrain North Korea’s behaviour, now is the ideal moment for the rogue state to further its ambitions for new types of WMDs. Also to Pyongyang’s advantage is that the international community’s ability to monitor North Korea’s sanctions evasion has become thwarted by its improved relations with Russia, another country that possesses active offensive biological weapons capabilities.
A major concern is that in contrast to missiles, there is no equivalent of a missile-defence system for bioweapons. Unlike missile warfare, we know very little about just what bioweapons may be on the Kim regime’s wish-list, and, as a result, how we should respond to any potential attack. At the same time, Pyongyang is continuing to improve its cyberwarfare and technological capabilities. This not only provides a useful source of funding for its nuclear and missile programmes, but underscores the very real likelihood that North Korea is using new technologies to create bioweapons, such as through genetic engineering.
North Korea’s bioweapons aspirations are even more of an unknown known than its nuclear weapons programme. But whilst bioweapons may be an invisible enemy, it is time to treat it as an increasingly real threat.
Comments