North Korea said to have up to 5,000 tonnes of chemical weapons
Seoul — North Korea has up to 5,000 tonnes of chemical weapons, South Korean experts said on Friday, including the toxin used to assassinate its leader’s half-brother. Traces of VX — a nerve agent listed as a weapon of mass destruction by the UN — were detected on swabs from the face and eyes of Kim Jong-nam, who was poisoned at Kuala Lumpur’s international airport last week, Malaysian police said on Friday. Malaysian detectives are holding three people — women from Indonesia and Vietnam, and a North Korean man — but want to speak to seven others, four of whom are believed to have fled to Pyongyang. South Korea’s defence ministry said in its 2014 defence white paper that the North began producing chemical weapons in the 1980s and estimated that it had about 2,500 to 5,000 tonnes in stock. North Korea has chemical weapons production facilities in eight locations including the northeastern port of Chongjin and the northwestern city of Sinuiju, it said in the 2012 edition of the docume...
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