In the latest verbal fireworks involving the Pacific Rim's most unstable nation, overnight North Korea accused the CIA and the South Korea National Intelligence service of supporting a terrorist cell plotting to kill its "supreme leadership" with a bio-chemical weapon and said such a "pipe-dream" could never succeed.
According to AFP, the North's Ministry of State Security released a statement saying "the last-ditch effort" of U.S. "imperialists" and the South had gone "beyond the limits."
“The Central Intelligence Agency of the US and the National Intelligence Service (NIS) 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 adding that “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 military parade and public procession after his return home."
“A hideous terrorists’ group, which the CIA and the NIS infiltrated into the DPRK on the basis of covert and meticulous preparations to commit state sponsored terrorism against the supreme leadership of the DPRK by use of biochemical substance, has been recently detected.”
In taking a page right out of the Turkish "shadow government" playbook, North Korea said the cell had “infiltrated” North Korea but the Ministry of State Security will “ferret out and mercilessly destroy to the last one the terrorists of the US CIA,” the local ministry said as cited by the state’s KCNA news agency. Pyongyang identified one of the people involved in the “vicious plot” as “Kim,” a timber worker who was allegedly bribed by the CIA while working in Russia in June 2014.
Kim reportedly received over $20,000 from South Korean agents on two occasions and reportedly planned to attack the North Korean leadership during a public event in Pyongyang. The cell planned to use an unspecified poison.
“The intelligence agents 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 twelve months.... [A North] Korean-style anti-terrorist attack will be commenced from this moment to sweep away the intelligence and plot-breeding organizations of the US imperialists and the puppet clique,” the ministry statement warned.
North Korea also gave lengthy details about the alleged plot but said it could never be accomplished. "Criminals going hell-bent to realize such a pipe dream cannot survive on this land even a moment," it said.
North Korea also threatened “its own kind of counter-terrorism strike” against the U.S. and South Korea.
The report did not provide any evidence of the alleged plot, however it noted that an assassination of Kim Jong-un and other senior government officials in Pyongyang is part of Seoul’s contingency plans for a possible major military confrontation between the two Koreas. The US is said to be lending its expertise to the plan.
That said, the mostly paranoid statement is not without foundation: two women accused of killing the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim with a chemical weapon appeared in court in Malaysia last month. As a reminder, the women reportedly smeared his face with the toxic VX nerve agent, a chemical described by the United Nations as a weapon of mass destruction, at Kuala Lumpur airport on Feb. 13.