Raw Materials for Potential Chemical Warfare Agents: Technical Assessment 1

Understanding the raw materials and precursor chemicals required to support a chemical weapons (CW) programme is an important foundation stone in an assessment of whether North Korea’s chemical industry possesses adequate infrastructure and capability to support such a programme.

This report outlines the chemical steps required to produce those key precursor chemicals. It considers the upstream and downstream processing steps from raw materials, such as coal, that could potentially give North Korea access to those precursor chemicals.

While the primary purpose of this report is to serve as a point of reference to identify relevant chemicals for the Project Anthracite team, it will also serve as a useful reference for those engaged in similar work.

The analysis in this report is insufficient to determine whether North Korea is engaged in the production of chemical warfare agents (CWAs), but it does identify the chemical processes that would be required to sustain a CW programme. The availability of raw materials, coupled with the availability of basic technology, strongly supports the premise that North Korea can produce simple agents, such as sulfur mustard. There is, however, a greater degree of technical capability needed to produce nerve agents, and this capability may not be immediately obvious in North Korea’s chemical industry.

This report is unique in that it considers the whole range of chemical processes and raw materials required to produce CWAs and does not assume the availability of chemical precursors. Instead, it traces the CWAs, which are relatively complex molecules, back to their roots in raw materials and minerals such as coal and apatite.

This report was authored by members of the RUSI Project Anthracite Team, who provide varying levels of input to the reports produced by the project. The team includes the following:

Lennie Phillips is Senior Research Fellow, Chemical Weapons in the Proliferation and Nuclear Policy research team at RUSI.

Sean Corbett is a Senior Associate Fellow at RUSI.

David Crouch is a Senior Associate Fellow at RUSI.

Jack Crawford is a Research Fellow in the Proliferation and Nuclear Policy research team at RUSI.

Gareth Williams is a Senior Associate Fellow with the Proliferation and Nuclear Policy research team at RUSI.

Hailey Wingo is a Researcher at VERTIC.

Nathan Hunt is an independent contractor.

Stephen Mercado is an independent contractor.

Yuseong Choi is an independent contractor.

Gianguiseppe Pili is an Associate Fellow at RUSI and an Assistant Professor in the Intelligence Analysis Program at James Madison University.

Samuel Rooker is a student in the Intelligence Analysis Program of James Madison University.