Hankyoreh investigation finds evidence of programs whereby botulinum toxin has been brought in without informing S. Korean government

Along with bringing live anthrax into South Korea as part of countermeasures against biological warfare, the US military is also suspected of bringing the botulinum toxin - considered the deadliest toxin on the planet - into the country for experiments without informing the South Korean government.

There is also growing doubt about the US military’s claim on May 27 that this was the first time it had conducted experiments on anthrax in South Korea.

According to documents found by the Hankyoreh on June 3 on the website of the US National Defense Industrial Association and US military publications, the US army has been running experiments since June 2013 to defend against a biological weapons attack by North Korea at laboratories on three US bases in South Korea, including Yongsan in Seoul and Osan in Gyeonggi Province.

The experiments are part of the JUPITR Program, which stands for Joint USFK Portal and Integrated Threat Recognition. The experiment with anthrax samples at the Osan Air Force Base, which resulted in the incident on May 27, was also part of this program.

Peter Emanuel, BioScience Division Chief for the US Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC), explained that the JUPITR Program was a military project that began in June 2013 to enable US forces in South Korea to defend against biological weapons attacks by North Korea. Emanuel made the remarks during a presentation at the Chemical Biological Defense Acquisition Initiatives Forum, which was hosted by the National Defense Industrial Association on Mar. 19, 2013.

Emanuel is in charge of the JUPITR Program, which is run by the US military’s Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical and Biological Defense. According to Emanuel, the laboratories that are handling the experiments on botulinum and anthrax are the 65th medical regiment at Yongsan, Seoul, the 51st medical squadron at Osan, Gyeonggi Province, and an environmental experimental laboratory that is part of the United States Army Public Health Command. He did not specify the exact location of this laboratory, which is somewhere in South Chungcheong Province.

“Two systems went over to Osan Air Base and they were turned on at the beginning of September [2014] at an airfield and they were run up until about last week,” Emanuel said in an interview in Dec. 2014 with a US military news website called CBRNe Portal, confirming that the JUPITR Program is actually underway.

CBRNe is a military acronym for chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosives. Consequently, suspicions are being voiced that large amounts of virus and toxin samples were brought into South Korea for these experiments and that the experiments were conducted without providing any advance notification to the South Korean government.

Of the two agents, botulinum is much more toxic than anthrax.

US Forces Korea told the Hankyoreh that it did not have enough information to answer questions about this.

By Kim Ji-hoon, staff reporter

　

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