Arsenal of Concealed Weapons siezed from North Korean Assassin

Summary

November 27 2012

South Korean security forces have put on display a selection of ingenious concealed weapons taken from a North Korean Assassin, captured last year in Seoul.

These include a flashlight which is actually a three-barrelled single shot firearm, a pen that can fire a poison coated pellet and another pen containing a poisoned needle.

Source

Original Story

Bibliography

1. full source reference

Game and Story Use

• Most people would tend to assume such gadget-weapons were highly cinematic - however, armourer tests show them to be at least theoretically effective, so we have a definite case of truth in television.
• Assassin with clever concealed weapons sent across a national border to kill prominent exile is a fairly reusable plot.
• PCs would probably also like these sorts of weapons. Without a gadgeteer on the team, patrons such as The Agency are probably their best bet.
• Generally, a well made concealed weapon should give some kind of hefty bonus to holdout checks.
• If the North Koreans can make things like this, so can various terrorism sponsoring Middle Eastern States - coming soon to an airliner near you?
• SOE and the OSS turned this sort of thing out by the pallet load in WW2 - a lot of it has since been discarded as unnecessarily silly, but that doesn't mean someone wasn't taking notes.
• There's also the small matter of "shiney things" created to impress political leaders and then issued as a make-work. Churchill was famous for his love of gadgets during WW2 and loved to see what new gimmicks SOE had come up with … possibly someone in North Korea is keeping themselves off "Dear Leader"'s shitlist with a parade of fancy toys, which then end up issued to luckless field agents who have to stash them in a heap under the floorboards.