N.Korea likely to develop bio-weapons using COVID-19 crisis, says top expert

NIRMAL YESODA

Andrew Weber, who was assistant secretary of Defence for nuclear, chemical, and biological defence programmes during the Obama administration, has claimed that North Korea, led by Supreme leader Kim Jong-un, could make use of the coronavirus outbreak to develop deadly bioweapons.

According to Weber, North Korean could buy necessary technologies from western countries to contain coronavirus outbreak.

“The country could use this legitimate vaccine aspiration as a way to enhance their biotechnology capability. They could buy equipment from Western or Chinese sources that would be necessary for their vaccine effort, and then next year they could turn around and use it to produce biological weapons,” said Weber, as per a report published in Politico.

Bruce Bennett, a defence researcher at the RAND Corporation, an American non-profit global policy think tank created in 1948 by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces, also shared similar thoughts, and he made it clear that humanitarian things will not be banned by sanctions during this time of chaos, and North Korea could make use of this pandemic to develop doomsday weapons.

“Anything coronavirus-related is going to be viewed as humanitarian and humanitarian things are not prohibited by sanctions. You have to get an item by item approval, but there have been lots of humanitarian shipments going” into North Korea. Lots of stuff could be flowing in that,” added Bennett.

Several previous intelligence reports had also suggested that North Korea will prefer using bio-weapons than blasting nukes against enemies.

North Korean imposed a lockdown in the city of Kaesong near the border with South Korea after discovering their first ‘suspected’ COVID19 case on July 25. The step was taken on Friday after a person showed ‘suspected’ symptoms of COVID-19 in the city. The North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un declared a state of emergency in the Kaesong area.