In a largely underdeveloped and somewhat isolated country of 25 million, where the majority of people are believed not to have been vaccinated, this has the potential to be a humanitarian catastrophe of such magnitude that it would threaten the power of almost any government. in the world.
But Pyongyang is not like any other government. In fact, some experts say that instead of weakening Kim, the epidemic could make him more powerful – by apologizing for tightening his grip.
Kim has an extensive propaganda machine and the ability to block outside information that can help shape the story of this crisis to his advantage – just as his predecessors did with the famine of the 1990s, which he believes is tired of starving hundreds of thousands of North Koreans to death. Pyongyang then described its problems as a “difficult campaign” – and blamed them partly for the floods and partly for US sanctions.
Kim is already showing signs that she is trying to manage this latest crisis. Even before the outbreak was announced, Kim warned his staff to prepare for “another, more difficult march.” This seems to be a reference to a severe food shortage that is once again facing the country and has probably been exacerbated by the very restrictions on the borders that Kim has imposed to prevent the virus.
Analysts are also suspicious of when Pyongyang acknowledged the Covid outbreak. His previous insistence that he was free of Covid was a source of widespread skepticism, and some have suggested that his sudden openness to his problems coincided with a visit to the region by President Joe Biden, who was due to arrive in South Korea. Thursday night local time.
“The fact that Kim Jong Un has decided to go out and make this health crisis public is quite telling,” said Lina Yun, a senior Korean researcher at Human Rights Watch. “(It) may have a political element, obviously.”
This may not be the only way for Kim to ensure that Pyongyang is at the top of the agenda when the president meets with the new leader of the South, Yun Suk Yol.
Washington intelligence suggests Kim is planning either a nuclear test or the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile to coincide with the visit, an assessment shared by South Korea, which has prepared plans to respond to potential “provocations” from Pyongyang. That would be in line with Kim’s recent behavior. According to Seoul, on the same day that North Korea announced its explosion, it fired three short-range ballistic missiles into the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.
What remains unknown for a long time is: will Kim’s problems with Kovid distract him from such a show of force, or will it make him more militant?
“The worst emergency”
While Pyongyang may be seeking attention, few would speculate that it is exaggerating its outbreak. In fact, until recently, the lack of officially reported cases aroused widespread skepticism.
The official death toll on Thursday was 62 deaths, but experts say the actual figure could be much higher and likely increase.
State media reported that samples from some patients showed that they were carrying the Omicron variant, whose high transmissibility could be devastating for a population that is not only largely unvaccinated, but – according to official data – has no natural immunity through previous infections.
North Korea is not known to have imported coronavirus vaccines – although it qualifies for the Covid-19 global vaccine sharing program, Covax. Last year, she publicly rejected an offer for nearly three million doses of Chinese Sinovac Covid-19 vaccines.
On Monday, three North Korean cargo planes flew to China and back, according to a South Korean government official familiar with the matter. It is not known what the planes were carrying, but the rare trip came after China promised to help North Korea with the Covid outbreak.
“There is no evidence that North Korea has access to enough vaccines to protect its population from Covid-19,” said Boram Zhang, a Amnesty International researcher for East Asia.
“With the first official news of a Covid-19 outbreak in the country, continuing on this path could cost many lives and would be an unintentional disregard for the protection of the right to health.
In response, Kim seems unusually ready to acknowledge the problems facing his country by declaring a “worst state of emergency” and ordering all provinces and cities to be blocked.
But whether this will provoke popular anger against him seems unlikely to many experts, given Kim’s ability to manipulate the country’s significant propaganda machine – as long as it can prevent a direct impact of the crisis on the country’s ruling elites.
“If the upper elite starts dying en masse – there are a lot of them and we don’t know if they’ve been vaccinated – if a lot of them die from it, there may be questions about why North Korea hasn’t vaccinated sooner,” said Chad O’Carroll. , Managing Director of Seoul-based NK News.
Since the outbreak was announced, along with videos telling people what to do if they show symptoms of Covid, state television has devoted a lot of time to videos of Kim inspecting epidemic command centers and pharmacies – perhaps designed to show he controls the situation.
Kim’s health and leadership test
However, Yun of Human Rights Watch said that the very fact that Pyongyang publicly acknowledged the crisis suggested that there were “very serious concerns” about the outbreak and its potential for spread.
“North Korea has an unvaccinated population and chronic malnutrition, and they have no drugs to treat the main symptoms of Covid-19,” Yun said. “North Korea is much more fragile than any other country we know.”
Yun said North Korea now urgently needs foreign aid, especially vaccines and drugs, and even to accept aid – proposals have come from both the South and the World Health Organization – the vaccination process is likely to be slow because the country lacks the infrastructure for storing or transporting vaccines.
“This will test his leadership and create some urgency for a very creative storytelling in the North Korean propaganda apparatus,” O’Call of NK News said.
A priority for Kim’s state media will be to explain why strict border restrictions have failed to hold Omicron. O’Carroll said not only had these blockages failed, but they were a driving factor in the severe food shortages facing the countries as they prevented grain and manure supplies.
One opportunity for Kim would be to organize a very public show of humility.
“We’ve seen Kim Jong Un cry for the nation’s victims (in the past) – I think that’s something he can do to quell the outrage,” O’Call said.
“The people of North Korea have definitely been through a lot,” he said. “The first thing he can do is really apologize and take some blame for it.
Meanwhile, if Kim is really thinking about a demonstration of force that coincides with Biden’s visit, it may be a good idea to consider one of her last demonstrations of force.
O’Carroll said the timing of North Korea’s outbreak suggests that Kim’s large-scale military parade last month to mark the 90th anniversary of her army’s founding has become a “super-spread event.”
Crowds watching the parade were shown in a film celebrating without face masks.
“We know that citizens from all over North Korea have flown in to attend and celebrate this event,” he said. “This is the perfect Petri dish for the spread of this virus, so I think this parade will go down in history as a very bad idea for North Korea.
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