BEIJING – Kim Jong-un had tried in every way not to let the virus enter North Korea in the last two and a half years, sealing the borders and further isolating his hermit kingdom from the rest of the world. He didn’t make it. The first outbreak of Covid was recorded in the country, Kcna, the regime’s official news agency confirmed this morning: “It is the most serious national emergency”. A nationwide lockdown was immediately ordered: Omicron has arrived in Pyongyang. This explains the sudden decision, two days ago, to order all residents of the capital to return home immediately, citing an unspecified “national problem”.
The Marshal called an emergency meeting of the Politburo of the Workers’ Party at dawn this morning to address the danger by ordering all cities and counties to “strictly block” the borders and mobilizing emergency medical reserves. The cases (at the moment it is not known how many there are) are of the BA2 variant of Omicron, found after tests on some residents of Pyongyang carried out on May 8.
According to the World Health Organization, no North Korean has ever been vaccinated. After all, Kim has always refused vaccines: both those of the global Covax program and those offered by the Chinese of Sinovac and also those of Russia.
Failure to contain the infections could lead to an “unprecedented crisis for the regime,” Lim Eul-chul, a professor of North Korean studies at Kyungnam University in South Korea, told Reuters. According to analysts of NK News, a Seoul-based news site, the fact that Kim reunited the Party at dawn and that the news of the infections were published immediately afterwards is an indirect signal of the help that the Marshal is asking the rest of the world. An offer has already arrived from the nearby South, where the new president Yoon Suk-yeol took office the day before yesterday. And WHO has also said that Pyongyang can apply for vaccines from the Covax program if it wants to.
Doubts about a North Korea completely free from the virus have periodically re-emerged, given that the country borders on nations (South Korea, China and Russia) still struggling with waves of Covid. Precisely because of the Chinese lockdowns – and now the North Korean one – Pyongyang’s economy is already suffering. The Dandong-Sinuiju cargo railway line has already stopped and maritime traffic in and out of China has suffered significant delays. This means that fewer foreign products, such as luxury consumer goods, auto parts and electronics, will arrive in North Korea. “The slowdown will eventually impact fertilizers, cereals and humanitarian cargoes, which could have devastating consequences” if another food crisis arises in the country, NK analysts write.
Now that Omicron has blocked the country, what about the nuclear tests the regime is preparing? In recent weeks, US and South Korean officials had warned that Kim was preparing his seventh nuclear test to be carried out this month: US President Joe Biden arrives in Seoul on May 20 to visit. For John Everard, a former British ambassador to North Korea, Kim will continue nuclear tests regardless of Covid or other internal difficulties. “It is very likely that military tests, including possibly a nuclear test, will continue despite the spread of Omicron.”