SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – For more than a decade as North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un has made “self-reliance” in his leadership key, avoiding international aid and instead pursuing domestic strategies to fix the beating. your economy.
But with the suspected COVID-19 disease affecting hundreds of thousands of its people, Kim is at a critical juncture: either to swallow his pride and get foreign help to fight the disease, or to deal with it on his own. enduring potential massive deaths that could undermine his leadership.
“Kim Jong Un is in a dilemma, a really huge dilemma,” said Lim Yul-Chul, a professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University in Seoul. “If he accepts the help of the United States or the West, this could shake the independent position he firmly maintains, and public confidence in him may be weakened.
However, doing nothing can be disastrous.
After acknowledging the outbreak of COVID-19 last week, North Korea said “explosive fever” had killed 56 people and affected about 1.5 million others. External observers suspect that most of these cases are caused by a coronavirus.
No matter what the state-controlled North Korean media say about the sick, the outbreak is probably several times worse. North Korea lacks enough tests for COVID-19, and experts say it significantly underestimates the deaths to avoid possible public unrest that could harm Kim politically.
Some observers say the death toll is small for a country where more than 26 million people are unvaccinated and medicines are in short supply.
The North’s apparent lower death toll aims to protect Kim’s authority as he faces the “first and biggest crisis” of his decade in power, said Nam Sun-uk, a Korean professor. university.
The outbreak in North Korea may be linked to a massive military parade in Pyongyang in late April, which Kim is organizing to present new weapons and loyal troops. The parade drew tens of thousands of troops and residents from across the country. After the event, Kim spent several days taking dozens of commemorative group photos with parade participants, all without masks. Most of the photos involve dozens or hundreds of people.
North Korea may be able to hide the actual number of deaths in public, but the country’s increased restrictions on movement and quarantine rules could harm its farming. Its economy has already been shattered by more than two years of border pandemics and other restrictions.
North Korea is also worried about the shortage of medical supplies and food and daily necessities that have dried up in markets during the border closure, said Yang Mu-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
“They are going through another ‘difficult march,'” Young said, referring to the state’s euphemism for a devastating famine in the 1990s that killed hundreds of thousands.
Earlier, Kim rejected millions of doses of vaccines offered by the UN-backed COVAX distribution program. After the North recognized the outbreak, South Korea and China offered to send vaccines, drugs and other medical supplies to North Korea. The United States has said it supports international aid efforts, although it has no plans to share vaccine supplies with the North.
Receiving foreign aid would put the North, which is always very proud, despite its poverty, in a difficult position. Kim has repeatedly touted his country as “impregnable” for the pandemic over the past two years. However, he said on Saturday that his country was facing a “major shock” and that officials should investigate how China, his country’s only major ally, and other nations have coped with the pandemic.
To us, the professor, he said that Kim would probably eventually want to receive shipments with Chinese help, but not from South Korea, the United States or COVAX.
“Overcoming the ‘great cataclysms’ with what North Korea calls American imperialists and South Koreans will not be tolerated because it is contrary to the dignity of its supreme leader,” he said.
And North Korea will only accept Chinese aid if it is done in an informal, tacit way, because it’s a matter of “national pride,” said analyst Seo Yu-Sok of the Seoul-based North Korean Research Institute. He said China is likely to agree because it sees aid deliveries as a way to strengthen ties with a partner as it faces the West.
But Cho Han Bam, an analyst at the Korean Institute for National Unification in Seoul, said North Korea could seek support from South Korea because it questioned the effectiveness of Chinese vaccines. He said South Korean shipments across the Korean land border would also be faster.
Experts are divided on what support North Korea needs most. Some are calling for 60 million to 70 million doses of the vaccine to be inoculated repeatedly. Others say it is too late to send such a large volume and that North Korea needs more temperature-reducing tools, test kits, masks and other daily necessities.
As preventing the spread of the virus among the country’s unvaccinated population is no longer realistic, the goal should be to ensure a limited supply of vaccines to reduce deaths among high-risk groups, including the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions, said Jung Jae-hun. , Professor of Preventive Medicine at Gachon University in South Korea.
“Combating COVID-19 requires a comprehensive national capability, including the capacity to test, treat and inoculate people with vaccines,” Jung said. “The problem cannot be solved if the outside world helps with just one or two of these elements. ”
Add Comment