A new report released last week has revealed clues on North Korea's chemical weapons program by combining information on more than 30,000 patents and journal articles.
The report published on the 38 North website was based on research carried out under "Project Anthracite," a multi-year effort led by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) security think tank in London to use open source materials to produce a "networked overview" of North Korea's chemical weapons potential.
The report points out that industrial facilities, universities and government-run research institutions have the equipment and access to adequate feedstocks to produce a number of chemical weapons agents.
Although the report emphasizes that it does not prove production of chemical weapons in North Korea, it does add to the existing intelligence by "providing a feasibility baseline and identifies indicators worth monitoring."
"Taken together, the most striking insight from this analysis is not the presence of any single 'smoking gun,' but the convergence of multiple, discrete indicators that point towards embedded industrial capability," the report says.
