World catches a whiff of N Korea’s chemical warfare capability 

Lethal use of the world’s deadliest nerve toxin is strong evidence of a flourishing chemical warfare programme within the communist state.
Tasteless and odourless, VX severely disrupts the body’s nervous system. Its only use is in chemical warfare. Just 10 milligrams – equivalent to a pinch of salt – is fatal via skin contact, while the lethal dose for inhalation is estimated at 30-50 milligrams per cubic metre of air.
Stockpiling of more than 100 grams of VX per year is outlawed under the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 – which North Korea has not signed. 
VX is far more potent than sarin, the nerve agent used in the 1996 attack on the Tokyo subway. Iraq was found to have used chemical agents against its Kurdish population in 1988. UN laboratories detected traces of VX on Iraqi warhead remnants.
If war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula, the North could theoretically disperse such lethal chemicals over South Korean troops and civilians. It may also use them to kill specific persons in South Korea, or even sell them to international terrorist groups. 
The South Korean Defence Ministry reported in 2014 that the North began producing chemical weapons in the 1980s and has stockpiled between 2,500 and 5,000 tonnes of agents including VX, mustard gas and sarin. 
Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis noted recently that VX is not particularly difficult to make and that it can be easily attached to a warhead or other weapons – from a mortar or artillery shell to a missile.
Such weapons can also be delivered by aircraft.
The communist state is also reported to boast a stockpile of artillery shells and missile warheads with chemical and biological agents. 
In 2015, the respected James Martin Centre for Non-proliferation Studies released an analysis of photos of Kim Jong-un’s visit to a “pesticide” factory. The analysis concluded the factory actually produces weaponised anthrax.
The South’s Korea Institute for Defence Analyses last year estimated that North Korea possesses 25 kinds of chemical agents and 13 pathogens for biological weapons, including anthrax and bubonic plague. Though Pyongyang signed up to the Biological Weapons Convention in 1987, it has failed to follow up with required confidence-building measures since 1990.
South Korea has invited US forces for joint biological warfare-response exercises every year since 2011.
In 2013, Seoul and Washington agreed to build a joint surveillance system to detect biochemical agents along the DMZ and to share information.
In 2014, South Korea became the fourth country after Canada, the US and Britain to produce area detection devices to check for dangerous chemicals at key facilities. But the military says it needs to further beef up its chemical and biological warfare capability against the North.
The assassination of Kim Jong-nam only highlights the urgent need for Seoul to review its defensive shield against chemical and biological weapons. 
The government should also instruct its diplomats to alert the international community to the mass destructive power of such weapons in the hands of the unpredictable dictator in the North.
The UN needs to respond to the communist state’s biochemical weapons as strongly as it does to its nuclear and missile programmes.