Two years out of step with much of the world, North Korea is finally facing an inevitable explosion in the number of Covid-19 cases. The leader, Kim Jong-un, lambasted his country’s health authorities on Monday (May 16) for their handling of the epidemic, which has claimed at least 50 lives since its official appearance in the country, and ordered the army to mobilize.
Sign of the gravity of the situation, the North Korean leader has “strongly criticized the government and the public health sector for their irresponsible attitude”, reported the state news agency KCNA. During a Politburo meeting, he complained in particular about the fact that pharmacies were not open 24 hours a day. Drug supply officials « have not rolled up their sleeves and properly assessed the current crisis »he lamented, according to KCNA.
He ordered the army to get to work “to immediately stabilize the drug supply in Pyongyang”, where the first cases of Covid-19 in North Korea were officially detected last week. Kim Jong-un has taken personal action in the fight against the epidemic, which he says is causing “great upheavals” in the country, whose population is not vaccinated.
Large-scale containments
The leader oversees near-daily emergency Politburo meetings, and North Korean media released photos of him visiting a pharmacy in Pyongyang on Sunday. Despite large-scale confinements, 1,213,550 people have been infected, 50 have died and 564,860 are under medical treatment, according to KCNA, which does not expressly cite Covid-19, but speaks of » fever « .
North Korea’s healthcare system was ranked 193and out of 195 countries by a study by the American Johns-Hopkins University last year. The country’s hospitals are poorly equipped, with few intensive care units. According to experts, the country has no treatment for Covid-19 and does not have the capacity to massively test its population.
North Korea has cut itself off from the world for more than two years to protect itself from the pandemic. But experts considered it inevitable that the virus would eventually infiltrate the country, given the epidemic outbreaks due to the Omicron variant in neighboring countries.
The fact that Kim Jong-un publicly vilifies his own government reflects the « sense of crisis » who took over the regime, said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. “He puts his finger on the general inadequacy of the quarantine system”says this analyst.
A “zero Covid” strategy
According to KCNA, the North Korean leader has expressed his intention to draw inspiration from China’s strategy to fight the pandemic. China is one of the last countries in the world to practice a “zero Covid” policy, consisting of confining entire cities as soon as the slightest case appears, and systematically tracing and isolating the sick.
US President Joe Biden is expected in Seoul this weekend to meet his new South Korean counterpart, Yoon Suk-yeol. Pyongyang’s weapons programs and the Covid-19 outbreak will likely top the agenda at this summit.
Despite the health crisis, new satellite images indicate that North Korea has resumed the construction of a nuclear reactor long interrupted. Washington and Seoul suspect Pyongyang of preparing a nuclear test, which would be the seventh in its history and the first since 2017.
In this context, accepting South Korea’s aid against Covid-19 would hurt the ego of the North Korean regime and force it to refrain from carrying out this nuclear test, explains Cheong Seong-jang, researcher at the Sejong Institute. “If Kim Jong-un is determined to carry out a test, he will not accept help from South Korea”he believes.