The majority of smallpox vaccines that Seoul has stockpiled in case of a biological attack by North Korea have either expired or failed to pass toxicity tests.
According to a report by the Korea Food & Drug Administration released on Wednesday, Seoul stockpiled 7 million vaccines between 2002 and 2010.
However the report, submitted to the National Assembly’s Health and Welfare Committee, goes on to say that 2.41 million vaccines purchased from 2003 to 2008 have passed their shelf life of three years. All 1.06 million vaccines purchased in 2009 yielded inconsistent results in a toxicity test last July.
The KFDA requested the 2009 vaccinations be destroyed by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, stating that the vaccines’ toxicity is too high.
Seoul also had 980,000 antibiotics for the bubonic plague from 2001 before their shelf life expired. They have yet to be replaced.
According to the U.S.’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it stockpiled enough smallpox vaccinations for every single U.S. citizen in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
Although smallpox vaccinations without prior infection were commonplace, the World Health Organization recommended in 2010 that countries stop vaccinations as the risk of serious side effects was high and the disease was restricted to laboratory samples.
In the 1970s, the WHO rid the world of known smallpox infections, but the risk of the virus being used in a weaponized form for biological terrorism is still possible.
By Robert Lee (
robert@heraldcorp.com)
