North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said a “grave incident” stemming from quarantine negligence has created a crisis, a statement that comes after the country claimed for more than a year it had avoided COVID-19.
Kim said party officials neglected executing important decisions related to organizational, scientific and technological measures in response to the demand for prolonged national quarantine efforts, the official Korean Central News Agency reported Wednesday.
The KCNA report, which didn’t give details of the incident, said Kim analyzed the “ignorance, incompetence and irresponsibility of the cadres.”
Even though North Korea says it has no cases of the coronavirus — a claim doubted by U.S. and Japanese officials — it has taken drastic quarantine steps that have worsened the regime’s economic woes including closing the border with its biggest trade partner, China. COVID-19 brings a large risk to the impoverished state, whose antiquated medical systems could easily be overwhelmed by an infection wave.
North Korea has received no vaccine doses through COVAX, according to Gavi, the nonprofit group that delivers immunizations. “Work is ongoing and discussions continue,” it said in a statement in June.
North Korea was supposed to receive 1.7 million doses of the AstraZeneca Plc medication by the end of May, but shipments were delayed after North Korea was unwilling to follow COVAX instructions and rules, Japan’s Kyodo News reported.
North Korea is eligible to receive vaccines through the program backed by the World Health Organization, but it has shown hesitancy. During the pandemic, its small international contingent of foreign officials and residents dwindled as it put pressure on them to leave. The Kim regime could see risks in bringing in more people from the outside world to deliver vaccines.
The country’s main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, expressed doubt about vaccines in an article in June, saying they “may not be able to protect people from the virus spreading or new strains of the virus.”
The report on the quarantine incident follows a rare report on state TV last week that touched on Kim’s health, a move that may be designed to generate sympathy as the country deals with food shortages and an economic downturn. North Koreans broke down in tears over seeing a dramatically thinner Kim, state TV cited a citizen as saying.
North Korea’s economy, which suffered its worst contraction in decades last year, is on track to barely grow in 2021 as the country struggles with the pandemic, border restrictions with China and international sanctions to punish it for nuclear-weapons testing, Fitch Solutions said in April.
