Pyongyang admits the presence of covid but refuses aid – Pierre Haski

North Korea has often been defined as a “hermit country”, taking up an expression that applied to the monarchical era. This definition is certainly correct since the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, more than two years ago, or since Pyongyang closed its borders in a radical way. The choice of isolation is the key to the country’s “zero covid” approach.

But the North Korean regime hadn’t come to terms with the omicron variant, which found a way to infiltrate a closed country. North Korea, among other things, has the incredible peculiarity of not having vaccinated the population and is the only country in the world together with Eritrea to have refused all vaccines, preferring to hide behind barred borders.

Since May 12, Pyongyang has admitted that it has been hit by the pandemic. Supreme leader Kim Jong-un spoke of “the most serious problems in the history of the country”. A significant statement when we consider that North Korea experienced war in the 1950s and a terrible famine in the 1990s.

The Chinese example
The figures announced are substantial for a country claiming to have been spared from the disease: 1.7 million reported cases and some 60 deaths. But in reality the numbers mean little, because North Korea lacks everything, from tests to healthcare facilities. Above all, there is a lack of reliability and transparency. The World Health Organization website continues to report “zero cases of contagion” in the country, because it has not received any communication on the figures.

Kim Jong-un appeared in public wearing a mask (an absolutely exceptional fact) and called on his government to take an example from China in tackling the pandemic. In Shanghai, the Chinese approach involved total isolation, continuous testing and vaccination of the inhabitants. But North Korea has neither the logistics nor the equipment to imitate its powerful neighbor, and it is feared that generalized isolation could prove even more brutal and authoritarian than that applied in China.

Frequent air links with northern China seem to indicate that Beijing has sent medical aid to North Korea, but the Pyongyang regime has not yet responded to the offer of assistance from the new South Korean president, the conservative Yoon Suk-yeol, who took office from little. The pandemic, like everything else in North Korea, is a political and diplomatic issue.

Can North Korea Really Afford to Turn Down Offers of Help? In the 1990s, the current leader’s father had allowed famine to kill two million people rather than seek assistance. Today the dynastic regime invests a fortune in the nuclear and ballistic program while ignoring social problems.

The story is all the more delicate if we consider that Joe Biden is expected to visit South Korea on May 20 to strengthen the alliance between the two countries, in a key region for the United States and for its rivalry with China. In his inauguration speech, the new South Korean president proposed massive economic aid to the north in exchange for denuclearization. But for Pyongyang this is an unacceptable agreement.

In two and a half years, covid has highlighted numerous hidden problems. It happened in Europe and in the United States, while today it is China’s turn, with the disastrous persistence of the “zero covid” strategy, and now also North Korea, where military over-investment renders the country defenseless in the face of disease. The advantage of a dictatorship, however, is that you can always let the people die in silence.

(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)