SEOUL • North Korea yesterday accused the US Central Intelligence Agency and South Korea's intelligence service of a plot to attack its "supreme leadership" with a biochemical weapon and said such a "pipe dream" could never succeed.
The North's Ministry of State Security released a statement saying "the last-ditch effort" of United States "imperialists" and the South had gone "beyond the limits".
"The Central Intelligence Agency of the US and the Intelligence Service (IS) of South Korea, hotbed of evils in the world, hatched a vicious plot to hurt the supreme leadership of the DPRK and those acts have been put into the extremely serious phase of implementation after crossing the threshold of the DPRK," the North's KCNA news agency quoted the statement as saying. DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
KCNA said the two intelligence services "ideologically corrupted" and bribed a North Korean surnamed Kim and turned him into "a terrorist full of repugnance and revenge against the supreme leadership of the DPRK".
"They hatched a plot of letting human scum Kim commit bomb terrorism targeting the supreme leadership during events at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun and at a military parade and public procession after his return home," KCNA said.
"They told him that assassination by use of biochemical substances, including radioactive substance and nano poisonous substance, is the best method that does not require access to the target. Their lethal results will appear after six or 12 months... Then they handed him over US$20,000 (S$28,100) on two occasions and a satellite transmitterreceiver and let him get versed in it."
It added: "Criminals going hell-bent to realise such a pipe dream cannot survive on this land even a moment."
The estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was killed with a chemical weapon in Malaysia in February.
Two women smeared the man's face with the toxic VX nerve agent, a chemical described by the United Nations as a weapon of mass destruction, at a Kuala Lumpur airport on Feb 13.
REUTERS
