North Korea's CB weapons: Threat and capability

Compared to tire long-running problem of nuclear weapons development, the issue of North Korea's chemical/biological weapons threat began to gain momentum very recently, notably since the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States last year. More recently, in his State of Union message to Congress, the LIS president alerted the world about the danger of North Korea's weapons of Mass destruction including its chemical/biological threat. According to the ROK Defense Mute Paper, North Korea may have already produced somewhere between 2,500-5,000 tons of various lethal chemicals acid it is also suspected of maintaining numerous facilities for cultivating acid producing the anthrax virus arid other forms of biological weapons. On the international level, North Korea has riot yet acceded to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) which was concluded in 1993 under the auspices of the United Nations. Furthermore, it has paid little attention to the international efforts to strengthen the verification regime in the Biological acid Toxin Weapons Convention (1972). Against this backdrop, this paper attempts to go into detail regarding the whole range of North Korea's CB weapons threat including its potential capability for deploying such systems. The author also refers to the military implications in terms of war fighting strategy.