North Korean-Syrian Chemistry: The Weapons Connections

Is North Korea complicit in the use of chemical weapons in Syria? For a host of reasons, this question ought to be high priority for the United Nations chemical weapons experts who finally arrived in Syria this past weekend to investigate allegations of chemical weapons use in the conflict raging there for more than two years now.

The reasons to factor North Korea into this inquiry range from recent press reports — unconfirmed, but plausible — of direct North Korean involvement in the alleged chemical attacks themselves; to seizures in years past of North Korean goods evidently destined for Syria’s chemical weapons programs; to a fat record of North Korean-Syrian partnership in the internationally taboo proliferation of weapons of mass murder — not only chemical, but nuclear.

Unfortunately, the U.N. team, led by Swedish arms expert Ake Sellstrom, has arrived in Syria with a mandate so limited as to effectively invite them to ignore most of the juiciest leads.

That was not how U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon framed the task when he announced in March that the U.N. would conduct an investigation into reports of chemical weapons use in Syria. Ban stressed that “Anyone responsible must be held accountable.” But to get investigators into Syria, the U.N. had to first spend months haggling with the Syrian regime over the “modalities” of the mission. By the time the investigators finally arrived in Damascus, their official goals had been watered down to the point where it appears the U.N. has no interest in assigning responsibility. According to a U.N. spokesman, queried about the scope of the U.N. inquiry, “The mandate for this mission is simply to determine whether chemical weapons have been used. It is not going to determine who used those weapons.”

That’s a huge omission, leaving U.N. investigators to address even fewer basic questions than those which U.S. authorities, by their own account, have already pretty much answered. As explained by Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, in a June 13 White House press briefing, the U.S. intelligence community believes with “high confidence” that “the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year.” By this account, at least “100 to150 people have died from detected chemical weapons attacks in Syria,” and it is the Assad regime, not the opposition, which “maintains control of chemical weapons on Syria.”

Rhodes noted that while the actual loss of life due to chemical weapons was just a fraction of the more 90,000 deaths as of June, “the use of chemical weapons violates international norms and crosses red lines that have existed in the international community for decades. He also said that while U.S. authorities believe the U.N. investigation should go forward, “we are going to continue with our own investigation, along with friends and allies.” Rhodes made no mention, however, of North Korea.

If the U.N.’s Sellstrom cannot find a way to slip some focus on North Korea into his report, it would be more than timely for the U.S. to start filling in the blanks. If there are good reasons to rule out North Korean involvement, let’s hear them. Otherwise, it’s time for all these investigators to explain why North Korea keeps turning up in accounts of Syria’s chemical weapons projects.

Recent months have brought a rash of press reports alleging that not only has North Korea played a vital part in providing Syria’s Assad regime with chemical weapons, but also that North Korea has abetted their use. For instance, in June South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo quoted an unnamed “diplomatic source” saying that not only had North Korea transferred to Syria the technology for producing chemical warheads, but that North Korea has been continuously providing Syrian chemical weapons facilities with “after-sales services.” From Lebanon, The Daily Star recently reported that “After decades of covert military assistance, North Koreans are believed to be providing increased ground support to the Syrian regime.” The Star said there were accounts of North Korean officers helping the Syrian army near Aleppo — one of the sites of the alleged chemical attacks — with “logistics and operational plans.”

Such reports could perhaps be dismissed as rank speculation, with pivotal information attributed to unnamed sources. But then there are the reports submitted in 2010 and 2012 by the U.N.’s own Panel of Experts on North Korea sanctions. In their 2012 report, these U.N. sanctions experts included a fascinating section on the seizure by Greece, in November, 2009, of four shipping containers bound for Syria, originating in North Korea, and  stuffed with such military gear as 13,000 protective coats, “reported to have military use for chemical protection,” as well as 23,600 gas indicator ampoules “to detect specific chemical substances.”

Those North Korean chemical protective coats, according to the U.N. panel, were “identical” to a previous batch, also shipped out by North Korea, also bound for Syria. That batch of coats was in the process of being transshipped from North Korea via China, and thence aboard a Panamanian-flagged ship via the South Korean port of Busan, when they were seized by South Korean authorities.

For both these confiscated chemical-weapons related shipments, the declared recipient was the Environmental Study Centre in the Syrian Arab Republic. If that sounds innocent, it is not. The U.N. experts, in their 2012 report, said that this Syrian environmental study center “appears to be linked with the Higher Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology, an educational institution which provides training to Scientific Studies and Research Centre Engineers.” The report notes that both those outfits have been blacklisted by Japan “as entities of proliferation concern,” and the SSRC has been designated by the U.S. for its suspected involvement in Syria’s programs for weapons of mass destruction.

In view of that daisy chain of Syrian links between “environmental” studies and weapons of mass murder, it also bears noting that last November, in Pyongyang, North Korea and Syria signed a set of agreements. According to North Korea’s state news organ, the Korean Central News Agency, these included a memorandum of understanding “in the field of the environment”; or, as Syria’s state news service, the Syrian Arab News Agency, described it, “environmental protection.”

Was this a deal for two rogue states, both notorious for beggaring and murdering their own people, to collaborate as ecologically sensitive stewards of the planet? Or was it some arrangement for continuing traffic in sustainable chemical weapons?

Neither of the two rogue states released any details of just how they propose to jointly protect the environment. But for a sample of how Syrian-North Korean scientific deals have worked in the past, there’s the scientific cooperation agreement the two governments signed together in 2002. According to congressional testimony this past March by former State Department counter-terrorism official David Asher, that deal served as the “keystone” for proceeding with construction of a clandestine nuclear reactor in Syria, built with North Korean help as a copy of North Korea’s Yongbyon reactor.

So helpful to Syria were the North Koreans that one of Pyongyang’s former envoys to the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Yun Ho-jin, used a company now under U.S. sanctions, Namchongang Trading, to help with international procurement of material for the illicit Syrian reactor. When Israel destroyed the nearly complete reactor with an air strike, in 2007, the North Koreans — despite having lost some of their own personnel when the reactor was hit — did not simply wash their hands of the project. According to an April, 2008 press briefing by a senior U.S. intelligence official of the Bush administration, North Korea “assisted Syria’s covert nuclear activities both before and after the reactor was destroyed” — sending in experts to help the Syrian government cover up the nature of the debris.

All that might go some distance to underscore the depth, and ruthlessness, of North Korea’s partnership in proliferation with Damascus. North Korea is widely believed to have its own chemical weapons program and stockpile. In 2009, the International Crisis Group reported that while unclassified estimates of North Korea’s chemical weapons arsenal were imprecise, “the consensus is that the Korean People’s army (KPA) possesses 2,500-5,000 tons, including mustard, phosgene blood agents, sarin, tabun and V-agents (persistent nerve agents).”

According to political scientist and former U.S. senior defense intelligence analyst Bruce Bechtol, “There has been a significant uptick in North Korea’s supply of important weapons to the Syrians in the past year.” Bechtol says that in years past, North Korea built at least two chemical weapons facilities in Syria for the Assad regime, and that there have been recent reports both from journalists and non-governmental organizations operating inside Syria of “North Koreans spotted close to the battlefront.” Bechtol speculates that in order to use chemical weapons, the Syrian regime would quite likely turn to the North Koreans, both for expertise, and re-supply.

Does all this add up to proof that North Korea is intimately involved in the use of chemical weapons in Syria? No. But it certainly does it suggest that all the various investigators, from the U.N., the U.S. and beyond, ought to be seriously looking into the possibility. To do otherwise would send North Korea the message that no one wants to inquire too deeply into its proliferation traffic with the hub of Middle East terror that is the Syrian-Iranian-Hezbollah axis. That would invite far worse trouble ahead, especially if, as seems likely, the allegations of North Korean complicity in Syria’s chemical weapons use happen to be correct.

Ms. Rosett is a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and heads its Investigative Reporting Project.