This analysis attracts on Challenge Anthracite, a multiyear initiative funded by International Affairs Canada and led by RUSI and VERTIC, with help from 38 North. The venture makes use of open-source instruments to evaluate whether or not North Korea’s chemical trade may help a chemical weapons program, together with evaluation of translated North Korean scientific literature.
Government Abstract
This report on the Sunchon space is the seventh web site profile exploring chemical manufacturing services all through North Korea. Challenge Anthracite seeks to make use of open-source data to map out the North Korean chemical trade and its potential hyperlinks to a chemical weapons programme.
The Sunchon space has traditionally been related to a dual-use capability to contribute to such a programme, but it surely has seen important reconstruction over the previous decade, together with of the Sunchon Phosphatic Fertiliser Plant and the Sunchon C1 Chemical Facility. Each websites changed parts of the previous Sunchon Vinalon Complicated, a web site which from evaluation of open sources appears to have produced most of the similar supplies utilizing related processes to these on the eighth February Vinalon Complicated. As well as, this report analyses the Sunchon Pharmaceutical Manufacturing unit and the Sunchon Chemical Complicated.
The options and areas of the Sunchon Phosphatic Fertiliser Plant are according to the large-scale manufacturing of phosphatic fertilisers utilizing each a moist and dry course of. This yields decrease purity phosphorus, of use primarily for agricultural fertiliser, and better purity white phosphorus, of use for consumables but additionally of dual-use relevance for organophosphorus chemistry in relation to nerve agent manufacturing.
The options and areas of the Sunchon C1 Chemical Facility are according to the usage of coal gasification to generate a variety of hydrocarbons, together with massive portions of methanol for conversion to gasoline. But, massive areas of the location stay underneath development as of February 2026.
The Sunchon Chemical Complicated, as referred to in North Korean sources, seems to embody each the Songyong Paints Manufacturing unit and a Nutrient Resolution Manufacturing unit. The 2 services are situated on completely different websites. The Nutrient Resolution Manufacturing unit is co-located with the Sunchon Pharmaceutical Plant, and its processes seem according to the potential provision of development medium for antibiotic manufacturing on the Pharmaceutical Plant. The Songyong Paints Manufacturing unit has options inconsistent with its reported function, together with a better degree of safety than the opposite chemical websites analysed on this report, and a possible helipad. It’s reported to provide acrylic acid by way of oxidation of propylene, however a small change to this course of may yield important quantities of hydrogen cyanide (HCN).
No proof of manufacturing associated to chemical warfare brokers was recognized. But, the Sunchon space stays related for dual-use chemistry, together with large-scale synthesis of discrete natural chemical compounds (DOCs) and phosphorous chemistry, regardless of the transition from the previous Vinalon Complicated to the present trade. The supplies out there from the Sunchon space could possibly be of relevance to the manufacturing of nerve brokers, given the shut proximity of services producing phosphorus and DOCs, though chlorine was not recognized as a product of any of the websites analysed. Moreover, the presence of methanol and ammonia on the C1 Plant and Sunchon Phosphatic Fertiliser Complicated, respectively, may help the manufacturing of HCN and nitrogen mustards.
