Fox News revealed on Monday that, for more than a year, a United Nations agency in Geneva has been helping North Korea prepare an international patent application for production of sodium cyanide.
Sodium cyanide is a chemical used to make the nerve gas Tabun which has been on a list of materials banned from shipment to North Korea by the UN Security Council since 2006.
The World Intellectual Property Organization, or WIPO, has made no mention of the application to the Security Council committee monitoring North Korea sanctions, nor to the UN Panel of Experts that reports sanctions violations to the committee, even while concerns about North Korean weapons of mass destruction, and the willingness to use them, have been on a steep upward spiral.
Fox News told both UN bodies of the patent application for the first time late last week, after examining the application file on a publicly available WIPO internal website.
Information on the website indicates that North Korea started the international patent process on November 1, 2015, about two months before its fourth illegal nuclear test.
The most recent document on the website is a “status report,” dated May 14, 2017 (and replacing a previous status report of May 8), declaring the North Korean applicants’ fitness “to apply for and be granted a patent.” READ MORE
