North Korean leader Kim Jong Un appeared at a meeting on strategies to combat the spread of the Corona virus in Pyongyang, North Korea, last week.
With the contagion spreading rapidly, foreign experts who spoke to the New York Times warn that North Korea’s desire to “make Beijing’s harsh rules”, which has not proven successful, may lead to a “health disaster” that threatens the world.
When North Korean leader Kim Jong Un admitted the outbreak of the new Corona virus (Covid-19) last week, he ordered his government to learn from what he considered China’s “success” in combating the virus.
But what he did not say is that trying to follow China’s response to the epidemic could send his poor country toward disaster, according to the newspaper.
China has used strict lockdowns, mass testing and vaccinations to keep cases low throughout the epidemic, while North Korea, which is experiencing an explosive outbreak of the virus, lacks the basic treatments and food supplies that China has mobilized to impose the severe restrictions seen in cities such as Wuhan, Xi’an and Shanghai.
Now, public health experts warn that Chairman Kim’s desire to follow the Chinese example will only “exacerbate the impact of a fast-spreading catastrophe”.
Indeed, the number of new suspected patients in North Korea rose from 18,000 last Thursday to hundreds of thousands per day this week, although it is impossible to know the true extent of the outbreak.
North Korea described itself as COVID-free for two years until it first confirmed the outbreak last Thursday.
Most people are unvaccinated, and the country is so isolated that when an estimated two million people died during a famine in the mid-1990s, the outside world didn’t know until the corpses of North Koreans began to emerge along the shallow river that borders it with China.
Without enough test kits to accurately measure the scale of the outbreak, North Korea relied on the number of “people found with a fever”, not the number who tested positive for the virus.
The country has reported 62 deaths among its nearly 1.7 million suspected patients.
On Wednesday, state media claimed that one million people had already recovered from the fever, although experts doubt that the numbers reported by North Korea are reliable.
“North Korea is likely to underestimate the true number of infections in order to be able to control its own people,” the newspaper quoted Jacob Lee, an infectious disease specialist at Halim University Medical Center in South Korea.
North Koreans are having problems securing food.
The state-subsidized food ration system collapsed during the famine of the 1990s, and outside health experts say that if North Koreans are put under the kind of severe lockdowns that China has experienced, the government will not be able to provide for basic needs.
The government ordered all cities and counties to close, but urged them to continue to “regulate work and production”. Although intercity and county traffic is prohibited.
People are still allowed to move within their regions and come to work on farms and factories, according to Asia Press, a Japan-based website that reports on North Korea with the help of in-country sources.
There was also a large-scale campaign to check temperatures in factories and apartment complexes, and people were allowed to go to non-governmental markets for food and other necessities, according to Asia Press.
The newspaper says the closure of non-governmental markets has been devastating because most North Koreans depend on them to supplement their meager government quotas.
In contrast to Kim’s admiration for China’s coronavirus policies, a growing number of health organizations and world leaders have criticized them as unworkable in the long run.
China’s borders remain closed and have rarely allowed outside experts to visit since the pandemic began, foreign investment is drying up, and some educated young people are leaving the country to escape living in frequent closures.
Experts who spoke to the newspaper compare well-developed health systems, good public health, and adequate nutrition in countries such as South Korea, and the lack of any of this in its northern neighbor, and say that this may make deaths significantly higher in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula.
The origin of the outbreak in North Korea remains unclear, but in recent weeks, Kim has mobilized tens of thousands of people without masks for a major military parade in the capital, Pyongyang, to celebrate the country’s growing nuclear capabilities.
He also mobilized students and workers to help grow rice in the countryside this month, a very important task in a country with a chronic grain shortage.
North Korean officials first detected infections in a group of college students who attended the military parade, including one who appears to have contracted the virus from a relative who recently visited China, according to Daily NK, a Seoul-based website that reports on North Korea.
North Korean state media reported that more cases of fever were found in Pyongyang, as well as in the southern provinces where most of the rice cultivation took place.
The newspaper says that China’s isolationist approach to the epidemic is what appeals to Mr. Kim most as he tries to respond to the crisis and maintain his power over his people. And when Seoul tried to send an invitation to discuss aid related to the epidemic this week, North Korea refused to accept it. It also rejected donations from Kovacs, the global vaccine program.
The country has not formally explained why, but it has been reluctant to accept aid shipments that require that monitors be allowed into the country.
South Korean media reported on Tuesday that three North Korean cargo planes made a round trip to the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang on Monday to pick up 150 tons of emergency aid. The Chinese Foreign Ministry refused to confirm this information.