The Vicious Cold War Poison That Killed Kim Jong Un's Half Brother
Last week, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un's half brother, Kim Jong Nam, was assassinated in Malaysia by a chemical weapon. After a week of investigating, Malaysian officials have just identified the specific chemical used. The Washington Post reports that Kim Jong Nam was killed by VX, a deadly nerve agent used during the Cold War.
VX is a chemical nerve agent originally developed as a pesticide in the 1950s. It turned out to be better at killing people than pests, and was used as a nerve agent by several countries during the Cold War. It has many chemical offshoots, such as VR and VE, collectively called the "V-series" developed by Soviet labs. It's also closely related to sarin, another well-known nerve agent.
VX is a highly versatile chemical and can be mixed into food or drink, or sprayed as an aerosol. In the case of Kim Jong Nam, it was smeared on his face as a kind of cream. VX can be ingested in any number of ways, including skin absorption, making it very easy to target individual people.
In high enough quantities, VX can cause convulsions and paralysis. At lower quantities, VX causes nausea and vomiting, pain, confusion, and weakness. If not properly treated, a high enough dose of VX can cause death within a few minutes.
Along with most other chemical weapons, VX was banned by an international treaty in 1997. Today it's only produced in research labs and maintained in U.S. and Russian stockpiles. However, it's not terribly difficult for a well-equipped lab to manufacture, and now it seems almost certain that North Korea is producing VX on its own.
North Korea is unlikely to use VX in any sort of large scale attack. It's extremely difficult to deploy the poison by traditional means without destroying the payload in the process. But the death of Kim Jong Nam shows that North Korea is willing and able to carry out assassinations on foreign soil, so we may see more of these attacks in the near future.
Source: The Washington Post via Gizmodo
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