Kim Jong-un orders lockdown as North Korea confirms first Covid outbreak

NORTH Korea has imposed a nationwide lockdown to control its first acknowledged Covid-19 outbreak of the pandemic.

It has continued to insist for two years that it has a perfect record of keeping out the virus that has spread to nearly every place in the world, although the claim is widely doubted.

The size of the outbreak was not immediately known, but it could have serious consequences because the country has a poor health care system and its 26 million people are believed to be mostly unvaccinated.

Some experts say the North, by its rare admission of an outbreak, may be seeking outside aid.

The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said tests of samples collected from an unspecified number of people with fevers in the capital, Pyongyang, confirmed they were infected with the Omicron variant.

In response, leader Kim Jong-un yesterday called for a thorough lockdown of cities and counties and said workplaces should be isolated by units to block the virus from spreading.

The North’s government has shunned vaccines offered by the Un-backed Covax distribution programme, possibly because those have international monitoring requirements.

Mr Kim called for officials to stabilise transmissions and eliminate the source as fast as possible, while also easing the inconveniences to the public caused by the virus controls. He said “single-minded public unity is the most powerful guarantee that can win in this anti-pandemic fight”, according to KCNA.

Leif-eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Seoul’s Ewha Womans University, said the North was likely to strengthen lockdowns, even though the failure of China’s “zero-covid” approach suggests the strategy does not work against Omicron.

“For Pyongyang to publicly admit Omicron cases, the public health situation must be serious,” Mr Easley said.

North Korea’s previous coronavirus-free claim was disputed by foreign experts. But South Korean officials have said North Korea had likely avoided a huge outbreak, in part because it instituted strict controls almost from the start of the pandemic.

Early in 2020 – before the coronavirus spread around the world – North Korea took severe steps to keep out the virus and described them as a matter of “national existence”.

It quarantined people with symptoms resembling Covid-19, all but halted cross-border traffic and trade for two years, and is even believed to have ordered troops to shoot on sight any trespassers who crossed its borders.

The extreme border closures further shocked an economy already damaged by decades of mismanagement and Us-led sanctions over its nuclear weapons and missile programme, pushing Mr Kim to perhaps the toughest moment of his rule since he took power in 2011.

North Korea had been one of the last places in the world without an acknowledged Covid-19 case after the virus first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019 spread to every continent including Antarctica.

Turkmenistan, a similarly secretive and authoritarian nation in Central Asia, has reported no cases to the World Health Organisation, though its claim is also widely doubted.