http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology...aw/4208958.html
FIFTY MILES SOUTH OF the Chinese border lies the rural town of Chongju. Like many North Korean towns, it is a small, impoverished place where people scratch a bare existence from government-controlled farms. What photographs exist of Chongju reveal a brown landscape of depleted-looking fields and shanty-style houses. It is hard to believe anything of value grows here. But, according to intelligence reports, something precious to the North Korean regime may be under cultivation in Chongju. Beyond the shacks stands an installation suspected of being a component in North Korea's bioweapons (BW) research and development program. The effort is steeped in a level of secrecy possible only in a totalitarian state, but it is thought to encompass at least 20 facilities throughout the country. Another 12 plants churn out chemical weapons.
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On day one, the U.S. delegate, Assistant Secretary of State John C. Rood, charged North Korea, along with Iran and Syria, with violating the ban on researching and developing biology for war. "We have particular concerns with the activities of North Korea ... in the biological weapons context, but also because of their ... support for terrorism and their lack of compliance with international obligations," Rood said. Internationally, it is widely agreed that the country is aggressively developing several weapons of mass destruction.
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NORTH KOREA'S CHEMICAL and Bioweapons (CBW) program appears to be modeled on that of the former Soviet Union, which covertly constructed a massive biological weapons infrastructure within the shell of a civilian research organization called Biopreparat. Inside Biopreparat, the Soviets developed deadly agents that included weaponized forms of anthrax and pneumonic plague. Intelligence reports from the United States and South Korea list anthrax, smallpox, pneumonic plague, cholera and botulism toxins as leading components of North Korea's bioweapons projects. "Information from U.S. government sources indicates that North Korea is capable of growing several biological agents," says Michael Stebbins, head of Biology Policy at the Federation of American Scientists. And, he says, the country "has the infrastructure to weaponize them."
FIFTY MILES SOUTH OF the Chinese border lies the rural town of Chongju. Like many North Korean towns, it is a small, impoverished place where people scratch a bare existence from government-controlled farms. What photographs exist of Chongju reveal a brown landscape of depleted-looking fields and shanty-style houses. It is hard to believe anything of value grows here. But, according to intelligence reports, something precious to the North Korean regime may be under cultivation in Chongju. Beyond the shacks stands an installation suspected of being a component in North Korea's bioweapons (BW) research and development program. The effort is steeped in a level of secrecy possible only in a totalitarian state, but it is thought to encompass at least 20 facilities throughout the country. Another 12 plants churn out chemical weapons.
...
On day one, the U.S. delegate, Assistant Secretary of State John C. Rood, charged North Korea, along with Iran and Syria, with violating the ban on researching and developing biology for war. "We have particular concerns with the activities of North Korea ... in the biological weapons context, but also because of their ... support for terrorism and their lack of compliance with international obligations," Rood said. Internationally, it is widely agreed that the country is aggressively developing several weapons of mass destruction.
...
NORTH KOREA'S CHEMICAL and Bioweapons (CBW) program appears to be modeled on that of the former Soviet Union, which covertly constructed a massive biological weapons infrastructure within the shell of a civilian research organization called Biopreparat. Inside Biopreparat, the Soviets developed deadly agents that included weaponized forms of anthrax and pneumonic plague. Intelligence reports from the United States and South Korea list anthrax, smallpox, pneumonic plague, cholera and botulism toxins as leading components of North Korea's bioweapons projects. "Information from U.S. government sources indicates that North Korea is capable of growing several biological agents," says Michael Stebbins, head of Biology Policy at the Federation of American Scientists. And, he says, the country "has the infrastructure to weaponize them."
