Assessing North Korea’s Chemical Weapons Capability

The 2017 assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s half-brother in a Malaysian airport with the chemical nerve agent VX, an attack widely linked to the regime in Pyongyang, drew international attention to the topic of North Korea’s chemical weapons capabilities. A number of countries, including G7 states, have assessed that North Korea has a chemical weapons programme, posing a threat to regional and global security.

This three-year project, a joint initiative of RUSI’s Proliferation and Nuclear Policy (PNP) and Open Source Intelligence Analysis (OSIA) teams, seeks to provide a new and unique open source assessment of North Korea’s chemical weapons capability. Using remote sensing and other open source tools, RUSI researchers will conduct a review of key facilities to produce a networked overview of North Korea’s chemical industry. This will inform an assessment of North Korea’s chemical weapons production potential.