Kim Yo Jong, in a speech broadcast on North Korean state television, said after reviewing “various countermeasures, our countermeasure must be a lethal countermeasure.” Her remark suggests that she and her brother are not only fed up with North Korean defectors launching balloons from the South carrying anti-North propaganda, but are determined to respond in kind. The logical response to her claim that the South is sending the horrible disease to the North, she fears, would be North Korea bringing disease to the South. “If the enemy persists in such dangerous acts as inciting the virus to invade our Republic,” the Pyongyang Korean Central News Agency quoted her as saying, “we will respond to it not only by exterminating the virus but also by wiping out the south (sic ) Korean authorities.’ The fact that North Korean television showed Kim Yo Jong making a speech was a sure sign of the seriousness of the message. Previously, when she expressed her brother’s views more boldly than she would like to do in public, it was reported in a news report rather than live on television. Kim Yo Jong, whose only title is deputy director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party, ranks at or near the top of the regime’s hierarchy. If the hulking Kim Jong Un, 38, whose health is always in question, were to die or become incapacitated, the 34-year-old Yo Jong would inevitably be the main possibility to succeed him. None of this means he’s going to take over anytime soon, or that he has the power to do anything Kim Jong-un doesn’t order. He spoke ahead of a meeting convened by the party’s central committee in which he “officially declared victory in the maximum emergency anti-epidemic campaign to eradicate the new coronavirus.” North Korean television reported that her brother led the anti-virus campaign, even though he had dealt with the bug himself. “He was fighting a fever, but he couldn’t rest because he was worried about the world,” he was quoted as saying. Kim Yo Jong’s call for revenge against the South was a reminder that North Korea has focused on both biological and chemical warfare as weapons of mass destruction in addition to a nuclear program it says is necessary for self-defense. “Kim Yo Jong’s threats are not empty statements.” “The North has the capability to produce conventional biological warfare agents or toxins and biological weapons,” said a study prepared two years ago by the Federation of American Scientists. “If North Korea chose to use biological weapons, it could probably use agents such as anthrax, plague or yellow fever against water and food supplies in the South’s rear area.” However, Kim Yo Jong may have to wait before the North can truly launch biological warfare. The non-profit Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington has estimated that North Korea “possesses a number of pathogen samples that could be weaponized and the technical capabilities to do so, rather than develop, ready-to-use biological weapons.” However, “Kim Yo Jong’s threats are not hollow statements,” Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international relations at Ewha University in Seoul, told the Daily Beast. He believed, however, before resorting to weapons of mass destruction, the North Koreans “could fire at leaflet balloons and could even try to bomb what they believe are launch sites in South Korea.” Kim Yo Jong’s claims “about the coronavirus entering the country through the southern border,” he said, “are more about domestic propaganda than military escalation.” David Maxwell, a retired Army colonel now at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, told the Daily Beast “a biological warfare attack is a possibility” but asked, “To what end?” The North “certainly wouldn’t claim it, as that could trigger retaliation,” he said. While it “should never be underestimated,” he argued, “I don’t see how a biological attack would support the regime’s current goals.” Steve Tharpe, a retired US Army officer here, told the Daily Beast that “biological agents are much more difficult to control than nuclear and chemical” and require “great care in employment to avoid unintended harm to the military and /or the population of North Korea. “ In fact, North Korea is more likely to first show its anger over the leaflets by conducting a seventh underground nuclear test – its first since September 2017. “When North Korea conducts its next nuclear test, they will say in their public statements that this is necessary in order to protect themselves from the South’s aggressive and provocative behavior,” Bruce Bechtol, author of numerous books and articles on the North Korean military . leadership, he told the Daily Beast. The North would claim that the test was “purely a necessary defensive measure in order to upgrade their ‘deterrent’”. Evans Revere, a retired senior US diplomat who specialized in North Korean affairs, told the Daily Beast that the North “has stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons” but attributed “Kim Yo Jong’s threats to Pyongyang’s usual bluster.” However, “experience also tells us that we need to watch carefully in case the North Koreans decide to do something stupid.” Bruce Bennett, a Korea expert at RAND, doubted whether Kim Yo Jong “understands much about biological weapons” He must know, he said, “that the US threat to eliminate the North Korean regime if it uses nuclear weapons could be extended and to include eliminating the North Korean regime if it uses biological weapons.” Kim Yo Jong, however, may be losing his patience. “We can no longer ignore the incessant influx of garbage from South Korea,” he said. The fact that COVID-19 was first reported near the line between the two Koreas “made us suspect haters in South Korea,” he explained. “It is very natural for us to think of strange objects as vehicles of malignant pandemic.” South Korea, under a law enacted while the liberal Moon Jae-in was president, bans defectors from launching hot air balloons over the North, but authorities have not enforced it much since the inauguration of Moon’s successor, the conservative Yun Suk- yo in May. The Unification Ministry, in charge of South Korea’s trade with the North, said Kim Yo Jong’s claims were not only “baseless” but “extremely rude and threatening.” The South, a spokesman said, was “prepared for all eventualities.”
