The official regime news agency of North Korea accused America on Sunday of being “a vicious sponsor of biological terrorism throwing mankind into destruction” in an article echoing Russian government claims that Washington was producing biological weapons in Ukraine prior to Moscow’s expanded invasion this year.
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), run by the nation’s communist dictatorship, accused American soldiers of “germ warfare” during the active phase of the Korean War, which ended in 1953, and speculated that the United States “is behind the malignant epidemic crisis confusing the international community,” apparently referring to the Chinese coronavirus.
The Chinese coronavirus originated in the central metropolis of Wuhan, China, in late 2019. No evidence exists of any diagnosed case of Chinese coronavirus anywhere outside of Wuhan — including Ukraine and the United States — prior to the first cases of the disease in that timeframe. Information from leaked Chinese Communist Party documents published by the South China Morning Post in 2020 indicates that the first confirmed case of Chinese coronavirus was documented in Wuhan on November 17, 2019.
Despite this, multiple rogue regimes have attempted to accuse the United States of causing the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. Chinese Foreign Ministry officials have speculated that the Wuhan coronavirus originated in Maryland, citing lung injuries caused by e-cigarettes. Beijing has yet to reconcile the fact that lung injuries do not spread from person to person, while the Chinese coronavirus is highly contagious.
China has aggressively denounced theories that link the pandemic to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, known to be studying coronaviruses at the onset of the pandemic. A U.S. State Department fact sheet published in January 2021 indicated that “several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both [Chinese coronavirus] and seasonal illnesses.”
The Russian government, in response to global condemnation of its decision to formally invade Ukraine in February, has speculated through its own foreign ministry that the Chinese coronavirus pandemic was the result of biological weapons experiments in Ukraine.
The North Korean propaganda outlet claimed that Russian allegations against America this year support Pyongyang’s longstanding claims of biological warfare against the communists between 1950 and 1953.
“This being a hard reality, the U.S. has denied their bio-chemical warfare crimes for the past seven decades from the 1950s,” KCNA denounced. “Lurking behind this is the U.S. sinister intention to cover up at any cost its atrocities of germ warfare, denounced by the international community, and to continuously expand the military biological potentiality.”
“It is evidenced by the fact that biological laboratories run in camera by the U.S. in Ukraine were detected by Russia,” KCNA claimed.
KCNA insisted that the use by Americans of biological warfare during the active stage of the Korean War was “evidently verified” by a mountain of alleged “evidence” including “an international fact-finding group comprised of prestigious scientists.” In reality, the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea were largely alone in accusing Americans of using biological weapons in that war and documents from both regimes surfacing decades late indicate that the three regimes were aware they were fabricating the claim without legitimate evidence.
The weekend column in North Korea’s flagship news outlet went on to accuse the United States of being the source of a variety of diseases, without offering any evidence aside from Russian government claims that America was developing biological weapons in Ukraine.
“In fact, a lot of diseases including A-hepatitis and western Nile fever broke out and spread, timed to coincide with the execution of the U.S. epidemic research program in Ukraine, thus inflicting sufferings on people,” KCNA claimed, adding later, “It is by no means fortuitous that assertions are made that the U.S. is behind the malignant epidemic crisis confusing the international community. In fact, the U.S. is a vicious sponsor of biological terrorism throwing mankind into destruction.”
American officials have confirmed that Washington helped maintain “biological research facilities” in Ukraine.
“Ukraine has biological research facilities which, in fact, we are now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of,” U.S. Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland confirmed in a Congressional hearing in March, “so we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.”
Nuland did not elaborate on the nature of those facilities.
Russian officials have enthusiastically promoted the claim that the facilities were biological weapons sites, claiming that they had seized the sites as part of the ongoing attempt to conquer Ukraine.
“According to the documents [obtained in the seized laboratories], the American side planned to conduct work on pathogens of birds, bats, and reptiles in Ukraine in 2022, with a further transition to studying the possibility of carrying African swine fever and anthrax”, Ministry of Defence spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said in March. “The purpose of this – and other Pentagon-funded biological research in Ukraine, was to create a mechanism for the covert spread of deadly pathogens.”
The Defense Ministry later accused American scientists of housing “bat coronavirus” in the Ukraine laboratories, implying that America should be held responsible for the ongoing pandemic.
The U.S. State Department called the allegations of biological weapons development in Ukraine “outright lies” in a statement by spokesman Ned Price published in March.
“This Russian disinformation is total nonsense and not the first time Russia has invented such false claims against another country,” Price wrote, an apparent reference to the North Korean claims from the last century. “Also, these claims have been debunked conclusively and repeatedly over many years.”
“The United States does not own or operate any chemical or biological laboratories in Ukraine, it is in full compliance with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and Biological Weapons Convention, and it does not develop or possess such weapons anywhere,” Price insisted.
North Korea intensified the anti-American rhetoric in its state media arms this weekend, apparently in anticipation of the anniversary of the 1953 armistice agreement that ended active hostilities in the Korean War. As neither side signed a peace treaty, however, the war between the two Koreas and their allies, China and the United States, remains technically ongoing. North Korean nonetheless marks the anniversary of the armistice falsely as “Victory Day.”
“During the Korean War, the U.S. imperialist aggressors destroyed or plundered lots of historical relics and remains showing the time-honored history of the Korean nation and its wisdom and talents,” KCNA proclaimed on Monday, publishing an extensive list of alleged cultural sites the Americans destroyed. “The facts show that the U.S. imperialists are a strangler of human civilization.”
North Korea is a communist regime run by the cultish Kim family, whose patriarch, Kim Il-sung founded the country and mandated worship of his family. His grandson, Kim Jong-un, is currently the country’s dictator.