A North Korean soldier recently escaped across the DMZ. He was shot six times by his comrades before he reached safety. But his new wounds were the least of his troubles:
I'm not calling for war, especially with North Korea. It's not my place to be judge and executioner. But it seems to me there are a lot of people in North Korea who deserve to die. Economic sanctions? That'll only hurt the innocent. Assassination? The people who deserve it are so hard to get, and so well protected. Perhaps, like the French Resistance, we can air-drop thousands of cheap, one-shot handguns on the territories of the prison farms, momentarily giving some of the victims a chance to fight back. But it wouldn't hurt the top, and it might trigger a war.
So how about thinking slightly outside of the box? There has been talk of "ethno-weapons" for several years now, but there isn't enough genetic diversity in the Korean population to target only the monsters. Could someone develop a weapon that sickens only the well-fed, or the obese? Or a weapon tailored to a specific target? In 2012 The Atlantic reported on the progress made in engineering bioweapons tailored to a specific person's DNA. It seems the US has been collecting the DNA of world leaders for years, and recently Russia has lodged protests at what they claim are American attempts to collect Russian DNA. If some other stories are true, there is an attempt by the Secret Service to collect and dispose of everything touched by the president, in order to reduce his vulnerability to a tailored attack. I can't see how that can work, however, even for a germophobe like Trump.
So how about something tailored to Kim Jong Un? Or his family? I don't have the capability to do it, but with the availability of genetic technology increasing, and the price dropping, it's probably only a matter of time before some smart kid engineers biological viruses. Like computer viruses, it may be a problem too pretty to not hack. And today, governments can already do much, much more.
Again, I'm simply thinking aloud. Even if I could do it, I wouldn't. But BioAnonamous, are you listening?
The Parasites Feeding on North Koreans - The New York Times
Hacking the President's DNA
Along with the bullet wounds, he also had hepatitis B, pneumonia and “an enormous number” of parasitic worms in his intestines, some up to 11 inches long. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my 20 years as a physician,” said his South Korean surgeon. The worms can burrow into fresh wounds, with potentially devastating effects.And remember, this was a soldier, quite possibly one trusted enough to help guard the Demilitarized Zone. There's no way he was from an "hostile" caste:
Every one of North Korea’s 23 million people is subject to the brutal state-imposed caste system known as songbun. The word “songbun” should be notorious around the world. From birth, every North Korean is marked by the government as a member of a loyal “core” caste, a “wavering” middle caste or a “hostile” caste, and this designation determines access to food, housing, education, jobs — everything. During the famine of the 1990s, when more than two million North Koreans perished, the songbun system often determined who ate and who starved.If this is what life is like for him, what is it like for the others?
I'm not calling for war, especially with North Korea. It's not my place to be judge and executioner. But it seems to me there are a lot of people in North Korea who deserve to die. Economic sanctions? That'll only hurt the innocent. Assassination? The people who deserve it are so hard to get, and so well protected. Perhaps, like the French Resistance, we can air-drop thousands of cheap, one-shot handguns on the territories of the prison farms, momentarily giving some of the victims a chance to fight back. But it wouldn't hurt the top, and it might trigger a war.
So how about thinking slightly outside of the box? There has been talk of "ethno-weapons" for several years now, but there isn't enough genetic diversity in the Korean population to target only the monsters. Could someone develop a weapon that sickens only the well-fed, or the obese? Or a weapon tailored to a specific target? In 2012 The Atlantic reported on the progress made in engineering bioweapons tailored to a specific person's DNA. It seems the US has been collecting the DNA of world leaders for years, and recently Russia has lodged protests at what they claim are American attempts to collect Russian DNA. If some other stories are true, there is an attempt by the Secret Service to collect and dispose of everything touched by the president, in order to reduce his vulnerability to a tailored attack. I can't see how that can work, however, even for a germophobe like Trump.
So how about something tailored to Kim Jong Un? Or his family? I don't have the capability to do it, but with the availability of genetic technology increasing, and the price dropping, it's probably only a matter of time before some smart kid engineers biological viruses. Like computer viruses, it may be a problem too pretty to not hack. And today, governments can already do much, much more.
Again, I'm simply thinking aloud. Even if I could do it, I wouldn't. But BioAnonamous, are you listening?
The Parasites Feeding on North Koreans - The New York Times
Hacking the President's DNA
