Seoul, South Korea –
North Korea imposed a nationwide blockade on Thursday to control its first recognized outbreak of COVID-19 after more than two years of maintaining the widely held claim of a perfect record to protect against the virus, which has spread to almost anywhere in the world.
The blast forced leader Kim Jong Un to wear a mask in public, probably for the first time since the pandemic began, but the scale of North Korean broadcasts was not immediately known. Failure to slow infections can have serious consequences, as the country has a poor health system and its 26 million people are thought to be largely unvaccinated. Some experts say North Korea may seek outside help because of its rare outbreak.
However, hours after North Korea confirmed the outbreak, the South Korean military said it had discovered that the North had fired three alleged ballistic missiles into the sea. It was his 16th round of rocket launches this year, on the verge of forcing the United States to accept North Korea as a nuclear power and negotiate easing sanctions and other concessions from a position of strength.
The official Korean Central News Agency said that tests of virus samples collected on Sunday from an unspecified number of people with fever in the capital Pyongyang confirmed that they were infected with the Omicron variant.
In response, Kim called for a meeting of the ruling party’s Politburo to completely block cities and counties, and said jobs should be isolated from units to block the spread of the virus. He called on health workers to step up efforts to disinfect workplaces and homes and to mobilize spare medical supplies.
Kim said it was crucial to control transmission and eliminate the source of the infection as quickly as possible, while alleviating the inconvenience to the public caused by controlling the virus. He insisted the country would overcome the epidemic because its government and people were “united as one”.
Despite the increased response to the virus, Kim ordered officials to continue with planned construction, agricultural development and other government projects, while strengthening the country’s defensive stance to avoid any security vacuum.
North Korean state television showed Kim and other high-ranking officials in masks as they entered a boardroom, although Kim took off her mask to speak into a set of microphones. Photos circulated by the KNCA show Kim unmasked and sitting at the head of the table, where all other employees remained disguised.
South Korea’s unification ministry, which deals with inter-Korean issues, could not immediately confirm whether state media was showing for the first time that Kim had been wearing a mask since the pandemic began. Earlier, Kim spoke to huge masked crowds, praising an earlier response to the country’s pandemic, and his decision to be seen in a mask may be aimed at boosting public vigilance.
North Korea, which has maintained strict anti-virus border controls for more than two years, has not provided further details on its new blockade. But an Associated Press photographer on the South Korean border saw dozens of people working in the fields or walking on footpaths in the North Korean border town – an indication that the blockade does not require people to stay at home or free up agricultural work.
Measures described in state media and Kim’s statement that economic goals still need to be achieved may indicate that North Korea is focusing more on restricting travel and supplies between regions, said analyst Cheong Seong-Chang of the South Korean Institute. Sejong.
The North Korean government is avoiding vaccines offered by the UN-backed COVAX distribution program, presumably because it has international monitoring requirements.
Seoul’s unification ministry said South Korea was ready to provide medical and other assistance to North Korea on humanitarian grounds. Relations between Korea have deteriorated since 2019 amid a stalemate in nuclear talks and increasingly provocative weapons tests in the North.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijiang said Beijing was offering assistance to North Korea to deal with the outbreak. North Korea has reportedly rejected previous Chinese proposals for internally developed vaccines.
Kim Sing-gon, a professor at the Korean University of Seoul Medical College, said North Korea was probably signaling its desire to receive foreign vaccines, but wanted many more doses than COVAX to inoculate its entire population repeatedly. He said North Korea would also want supplies of drugs and medical equipment for COVID-19, which are banned by UN sanctions.
Omicron is much easier to spread than earlier versions of the coronavirus, and mortality and hospitalization rates are high among unvaccinated elderly or those with pre-existing health problems. This means that the epidemic could cause a “serious situation” because North Korea lacks medical equipment and drugs to treat patients with the virus, and many of its people are malnourished, Kim Sin Gong said.
An Kyung-su, head of DPRKHEALTH.ORG, a website focused on health problems in North Korea, said recognizing the outbreak in North Korea was likely to put more pressure on people to protect themselves from the virus, as China who shares a long, porous border with the North has blocked many of its cities due to fears of the virus.
North Korea is also likely to emphasize the blockade, although China’s zero-COVID experience suggests the approach doesn’t work against the fast-growing Omicron option, said Leif-Eric Isley, a professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.
“In order for Pyongyang to publicly acknowledge Omicron’s cases, the public health situation must be serious,” Isley said. “This does not mean that North Korea will suddenly be open to humanitarian aid and take a more conciliatory line to Washington and Seoul. But the internal public of Kim’s regime may be less interested in nuclear or missile tests when the emergency threat involves a coronavirus rather than a foreign army. “
North Korea’s previous claim of being free of coronavirus has been challenged by many foreign experts. But South Korean officials said North Korea may have avoided a major outbreak, in part because it has introduced tight control of viruses almost since the pandemic began.
In early 2020, before the coronavirus spread around the world, North Korea took serious steps to prevent the virus and described it as a matter of “national existence.” All of this has almost stopped cross-border traffic and trade for two years, and is even believed to have ordered troops to fire when they see any intruders who cross its borders.
Extreme border closures further shocked the economy, which has been damaged by decades of mismanagement and US-led sanctions over its nuclear weapons and missile program, pushing Kim to perhaps the most difficult moment since taking office in 2011. .
North Korea was one of the last places in the world without a recognized case of COVID-19, after the virus, first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, spread to every continent, including Antarctica. Turkmenistan, an equally secretive and authoritarian nation in Central Asia, has not reported a single case to the World Health Organization, although its claim has also been strongly challenged by outside experts.
In recent months, some Pacific island nations that have kept the virus away from their geographical isolation have reported outbreaks. Only a small Tuvalu, with a population of about 12,000, has escaped the virus so far, while several other nations – Nauru, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands – have stopped their borders and avoided community outbreaks.
North Korea’s outbreak comes as China – its close ally and trading partner – struggles with the biggest pandemic outbreak.
In January, North Korea conditionally reopened rail freight traffic between its border town of Sinuju and China’s Dandong for the first time in two years, but China halted trade last month due to an outbreak in Liaoning province, which borders North Korea.
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Associated Press reporters Lee Jin-man in Paju, South Korea, Ken Moritzgugu in Beijing and Nick Perry in Wellington, New Zealand, contributed to the report.
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