SEOUL — Leader
Kim Jong Un says a COVID-19 outbreak is
causing 'great upheaval' in North Korea, which announced 21 new
"fever" deaths Saturday.
اضافة اعلان
Two days after confirming its first cases of
COVID-19, the
government said more than half a million people had been sickened nationwide.
Despite activating its "maximum emergency quarantine
system" to slow the spread of disease through its unvaccinated population,
North Korea is now reporting tens of thousands of new cases daily.
On Friday, "over 174,440 persons had fever, at least
81,430 were fully recovered and 21 died in the country", the official
Korean Central News Agency reported.
North Korea confirmed Thursday that the highly contagious
Omicron variant had been detected in the capital Pyongyang, with Kim ordering
nationwide lockdowns.
It was the government's first official admission of
COVID cases and marked the failure of a two-year coronavirus blockade maintained at
great economic cost since the start of the pandemic.
From late April to May 13, more than 524,440 people have
fallen sick with fever, KCNA said, with 27 deaths in total.
The report did not specify whether the new cases and deaths
had tested positive for COVID-19, but experts say the country will be
struggling to test and diagnose on this scale.
North Korea has said only that one of the first six deaths
it announced Friday had tested positive for COVID-19.
"It's not a stretch to consider these 'fever' cases to
all be COVID-19, given the North's lack of testing capacity," said
Cheong Seong-chang of the Sejong Institute.
"The actual number of COVID cases could be higher than
the fever figures due to many asymptomatic cases," he said, adding that
the pace of infection was growing "very fast".
‘Great upheaval'
Kim said Saturday the "crisis" was causing
"great upheaval", as he oversaw a second Politburo meeting in three
days to discuss the situation, KCNA reported.
"The spread of malignant disease comes to be a great
upheaval in our country since the founding of the DPRK," he said,
referring to North Korea by its official name.
Kim is putting himself "front and center" of the
country's coronavirus response, said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at
Ewha University in Seoul.
"The language he's used suggests the situation in North
Korea is going to get worse before it gets better," he told AFP.
"Engagers see this rhetoric preparing the way for
international assistance, but Kim may be rallying a population on the verge of
further sacrifice," he added.
The meeting of the nation's top officials discussed medicine
distribution and other ways of "minimizing the losses in human
lives", KCNA said.
North Korea has a crumbling health system — one of the worst
in the world — and no COVID vaccines, antiviral treatment drugs, or mass
testing capacity, experts say.
But the country will "actively learn" from
China's
pandemic management strategy, Kim said, according to KCNA.
China, the world's only major economy to still maintain a
zero-COVID policy, is battling multiple Omicron outbreaks — with some major
cities, including financial hub
Shanghai, under stay-at-home orders.
North Korea has previously turned down offers of COVID
vaccines from China and the
World Health Organization's Covax scheme, but both
Beijing and Seoul issued fresh offers of aid and vaccines this week.
Kim's comments indicate North Korea "will try getting
supplies from China", said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of
North Korean Studies.
It also looks likely Pyongyang "will adopt a
Chinese-style anti-virus response of regional lockdowns", Yang added.
So far, Kim said Saturday,
North Korea's outbreak was not
"an uncontrollable spread among regions" but transmission within
areas that had been locked down, KCNA said.
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