North Korea imported 107,000kg of South Korean-originated sodium cyanide last year, acquiring a toxic chemical that can be used to make sarin nerve gas, South Korean officials said on Friday. South Korea worried that some of its 'strategic goods' - materials that can be used for military and terrorist purposes - have recently ended up in the hands of countries like North Korea and Libya, and said it was tightening control of exports of those items.
In the latest revelation, a South Korean company was found to have sold the sodium cyanide to a Chinese firm from June to September last year. The cargo was then shipped to North Korea, said the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy in a news release. The South Korean company shipped the chemical without an export permit. The company head was later prosecuted and sentenced to a suspended 1 1/2 years in jail for violating the country's trade law, the news release said. The ministry did not identify the names of the traders involved in the deal. Although it was unclear why the North wanted the chemical, the communist country does have a large stockpile of chemical and biological weapons, in addition to its nuclear weapons programmes, according to US and South Korean officials. |