North Korean swagger may conceal brewing virus disaster
TOKYO » In these days of infection and fear, a recent propaganda photo sums up the image North Korea wants to show the world, as well as its people: Soldiers with black surgical masks surround leader Kim Jong Un, ensconced in a leather overcoat and without a mask as he oversees a defiant military drill.
As a new and frightening virus closes in around it, North Korea presents itself as a fortress, tightening its borders as cadres of health officials stage a monumental disinfection and monitoring program.
That image of world-defying impregnability, however, may belie a brewing disaster.
North Korea, which has what experts call a horrendous medical infrastructure in the best of times, shares a porous, nearly 900-mile border with China, where the disease originated and has since rapidly spread around the world. The North’s government has also long considered public reports on infectious disease — or, for that matter, anything that could hurt the ruling elite — matters of state secrecy.
This has raised fears that North Korea, which claims zero infections, may be vastly unprepared for a virus that is testing much more developed countries across the globe — and even that infections could already be exploding within its borders.
“Unfortunately, the international community has no idea if the coronavirus is spreading inside North Korea,” said a recent report by Jessica Lee, an East Asia expert at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank in Washington. “The fact that we know nothing about the level of infection or deaths within North Korea is extremely problematic and, left unchanged, could have serious public health implications.”
North Korean media, meanwhile, are filled with self-described examples of ultra-vigilance — as well as a sense of urgency.
Calling its anti-virus campaign a matter of “national existence,” the North has banned foreign tourists, delayed the school year, quarantined hundreds of foreigners and thousands of locals who’ve traveled abroad, shut down nearly all cross-border traffic with China, intensified screening at entry points, and mobilized tens of thousands of health workers to monitor residents and isolate those with symptoms.
A parade of media photographs show North Korean doctors, scientists and health workers in masks, paper hats and protective clothing, discussing matters of science, or disinfecting public transportation, or planning ways to further protect citizens.
“No special cases must be allowed within the state anti-epidemic system,” Kim, emerging recently from a prolonged period out of the public spotlight to oversee a politburo meeting on the virus, said, according to state media. Officials must “seal off all the channels and space through which the infectious disease may find its way.”
Some North Korea monitoring groups, which claim to have a network of sources inside the nation, recently said that there are virus patients and deaths in North Korea, a claim the South Korean government couldn’t confirm.
If North Korea had an outbreak similar to what’s happening in South Korea, the world’s hardest-hit country aside from China, it would cause serious turmoil because of a chronic lack of medical supplies and medicine, said Nam Sung-wook, a North Korea expert at South Korea’s Korea University who served as president of the Institute for National Security Strategy, a think tank affiliated with South Korea’s main spy agency.
“North Korea would be helpless,” he said.
Some analysts believe that North Korea’s strong moves to shut down border areas with China, its only major ally and aid benefactor, signal that the virus has already spread into the nation from China, which has had more than 80,000 cases.
An epidemic in North Korea could further shake an economy battered by U.S.led sanctions over its nuclear weapons and missile program. That, in turn, could quicken the depletion of the North’s foreign currency reserves by choking off income from tourism and smuggling.