SEOUL, South Korea — Shin Dong-yun, a scientist through the North Korean Institute of Virology, rushed towards the border that is northwestern China in early February. There, he conducted 300 tests, skipping meals to assess a stream of people so that “the country is protected from the invasion of the novel coronavirus.”
Stories like this, carried in the state-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun, focus attention on one of the stranger oddities surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic: How could North Korea claim to not have a single coronavirus case while countries around the world stagger under the exploding epidemic?
But decades of isolation and international sanctions have ravaged North Korea’s public health system, raising fears that it lacks the medical supplies to fight an outbreak, which many fear has already occurred.
Last month, Daily NK, a Seoul-based website that hires anonymous informants inside the North, reported the deaths of 200 soldiers, as well as 23 others, who were suspected of contracting the coronavirus. But Kang Mi-jin, a North Korean defector-turned journalist in Seoul, said that no matter how hard they searched, her contacts in the North could not find a death officially ascribed to the coronavirus.
In the past, the country has hushed or played down epidemics, military rebellions, man-made disasters or anything else that could undermine the people’s faith in the government.
But this time, the North’s unusually aggressive moves, as well as its unique ability to detain people, may have prevented a outbreak&# that is devastating******************);, said Jung Gwang-il, a North Korean defector just who leads No Chain, a North Korean human rights activist team in Seoul. The moment an outbreak ended up being reported in Asia, North Korea curved up all Chinese visitors with its northeastern town of Rason and quarantined them on an island for four weeks, Mr. Jung stated.
“It’s safe to say that there are cases in North Korea but I don’t think the outbreak there is as large as the ones we have seen in South Korea, Italy and the U.S.,” said Ahn Kyung-su, the top associated with Seoul-based analysis Center of DPRK health insurance and Welfare, which tracks the North’s wellness system. “North Koreans are trained to obey government orders in a shipshape way during crises. But there is the risk of the virus running out of control if it starts spreading among its malnourished people.”