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Science

No Cases? No Chance. The Truth About North Korea and Covid-19 (wired.co.uk) 64

The real impact of Covid-19 on North Korea -- and its citizens -- remains a mystery. Faced with a global health crisis, the country has turned inwards more than ever. From a report: "North Korea, in general, is more difficult to know this year or last year than at almost any point in the last two decades," says Sokeel Park, the director of research at Liberty in North Korea, a group that works with defectors from the country to understand what happens inside its borders. "It seems clear to me that, nonetheless, the North Korean government has massively overreacted." Officially, North Korea has recorded no cases of Covid-19. Weekly reports from the World Health Organisation's South-East Asia office show that North Korean samples from PCR tests are being processed in 15 laboratories but all of these have come back negative. As of January 8, the most recent date for which figures are available, 26,244 samples from 13,259 people have come back negative. Around 700 North Koreans, out of a population of 25 million, are being tested each week.

"I don't know many people in the North Korea watcher, analyst and journalist community that actually believe there are no cases," Park says. All of the North Korea experts spoken to for this article agree. Some have accused North Korea of lying, while others suggest its approach is all about keeping control and public perception. The closest officials got to admitting there may be a case was in July when state newspaper Rodong Sinmun reported a "state of emergency" had been declared in Kaesong City, in the south of the country. The newspaper reported a defector who had returned to the country from South Korea was "suspected" to have Covid-19. But the case was never confirmed. Kim Yo-jong, the sister of Kim Jong-un, has hit back at suggestions from South Korea that the country may have had cases, describing such talk as "reckless."

From the outside, it is impossible to prove the scale of the Covid-19 crisis in North Korea. All official messaging is controlled by Kim Jong-un's regime and international diplomats and humanitarian groups have largely left the country. The last remaining members of the International Committee of the Red Cross left the country on December 2. The result is that little reliable information finds its way out of North Korea -- those with contacts inside the country and who work with defectors say it has been impossible to work out the reality of the health situation on the ground. Despite reporting no cases of Covid-19, North Korea has been quarantining potential suspected cases. As of December 3, 33,223 people had been released from quarantine, according to the figures reported to the WHO -- though no numbers have been reported since. Quarantine rules in North Korea are also strict, according to reports. When an outbreak occurred in China, North Korea tracked down all Chinese visitors in the town of Rason âand quarantinedâ them âon an island for a month.

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No Cases? No Chance. The Truth About North Korea and Covid-19

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  • by bmimatt ( 1021295 ) on Friday January 22, 2021 @02:39PM (#60979710)

    If Lil' Kim were not a complete sociopath, this would've been a good time for him to reach out and start normalizing relations with the world.
    I wonder if Biden's administration will see it in similar way.

  • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday January 22, 2021 @02:47PM (#60979758)

    Normally I would be the first person to cast skepticism on anything North Korea said.

    But in this case, doesn't it seem pretty reasonable to say they have no cases? They had extremely limited travel from other countries before Covid starting spreading, and internally people do not travel that much within the country. Combine that with a real doctor level of control over people wearing protective equipment at all times, and I could easily see whatever small number of cases they would have had, would have been contained long ago and then there simply was no interaction with other countries to bring the virus back in.

    Basically, they were already extremely isolated from the world before, and that has protected them in this instance.

    • by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Friday January 22, 2021 @02:58PM (#60979820)

      Normally I would be the first person to cast skepticism on anything North Korea said.

      But in this case, doesn't it seem pretty reasonable to say they have no cases? They had extremely limited travel from other countries before Covid starting spreading, and internally people do not travel that much within the country. Combine that with a real doctor level of control over people wearing protective equipment at all times, and I could easily see whatever small number of cases they would have had, would have been contained long ago and then there simply was no interaction with other countries to bring the virus back in.

      Basically, they were already extremely isolated from the world before, and that has protected them in this instance.

      They do/did have a decent amount of travel to China though, so that could quite likely be a quick transmission vector. With the overbuilding of Pyongyang and other cities crowding isn't really an issue there, but with the almost medieval level of civilization out in the rural villages if the virus took hold there things would not be good. And of course if the virus got into their reeducation camps it would be a decimation (in the literal sense).

      Also not hard to figure out which people those 700 are that are getting tested weekly.

    • by Whateverthisis ( 7004192 ) on Friday January 22, 2021 @03:00PM (#60979852)
      They are isolated from the US and a few other nations, but they are not under total lockdown. They do extensive trade with China, tourists are allowed (with Korean tour guides) from most countries in the world. Given their trade with China ($2.8B US in imports in 2019 alone), it's likely a few cases would get in. Once they get in, it would spread very quickly amongst their population as sanitation and general health and nutrition is reportedly very poor there.
      • Once they get in, it would spread very quickly amongst their population as sanitation and general health and nutrition is reportedly very poor there.

        I totally agree with that aspect, however the limited internal travel would seem to me to limit the spread greatly even so... I have no doubt there were some cases along the border especially near the start, but I think anything would have been well contained long ago with probably no new occurrences outside those areas. I'm not saying they never had it, just

      • ...as sanitation and general health and nutrition is reportedly very poor there.

        Right. Remember that North Korean soldier who defected about three years ago, at the Joint Security Area? He made it, barely. When doctors checked him over, he was found to have internal parasites, possibly from eating scavenged food.

      • Keep in mind though in young, healthy people the infections are mostly asymptomatic or to the level of the common cold. Most of the people in the US who are greatly affected, would probably already be dead if they lived in N. Korea.
      • Poor sanitation is not positively correlated with covid cases. Everyone expected huge breakouts in poor and crowded parts of Africa, Brazilian favelas, refugee camps etc, but little of that happened. One theory has it that it's primarily spread by air (not droplets), and the poor or no housing actually helps because it's (unintentionally) well ventilated.

        • All of what you said is hearsay and not supported by the data. COVID spread has nothing to do with sanitation, true, but it is true that when people have serious problems from COVID they are generally dealing with other health issues, and poor sanitation leads to those issues. Further, the vast majority of spread in the US is in the home (34% or some such), and generally nations with a poor standard of living have higher family members per household.

          And Brazil is horribly hard hit. They've had 210,00

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Yeah. It just might be that when they did or do find cases they're likely even better at applying best practices and stopping the virus from spreading than their neighbor South Korea is, which is by far one of best references in the world.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by SuperKendall ( 25149 )

        stopping the virus from spreading than their neighbor South Korea is, which is by far one of best references in the world.

        That was actually the other factor I had in mind but did not mention, was that a geographic neighbor had Covid pretty well contained - daily cases and deaths in S. Korea is extremely low.

        N. Korea would be able to lock things down to any degree desired if cases were found anywhere, more so than even China.

    • No cases seems unlikely, but I would kind of expect very low cases to be possible in the general population.

      In the US at least, it seems like a lot of our cases are from bar and restaurant goers, people who go to parties or other social events, the kind of stuff you expect from people with money and freedom of movement.

      How much of that kind of thing goes on at all in DPRK?

      I would kind of expect that in the elite echelon of DPRK that there would be more cases, mostly since those people have access to more re

    • A lot of North Koreans work in China and travel between the two countries is not as restrictive as you might think.
    • But in this case, doesn't it seem pretty reasonable to say they have no cases?

      No. Because they were slow closing their land border with China where the disease originated. "Don't travel much" is not a defence. You only need one carrier to spread highly infectious disease.

  • by ageoffri ( 723674 ) on Friday January 22, 2021 @02:47PM (#60979760)

    While I wish I could claim credit for the general idea, here's an outline of the infections in North Korea someone put together half in jest.

    9:00AM - 1 case COVID
    9:10AM - 0 cases COVID
    9:15AM - 1 case COVID
    9:20AM - 0 cases COVID

  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22, 2021 @02:47PM (#60979764)

    But the real impact of Covid-19 on North Korea – and its citizens – remains a mystery.

    So let's make shit up!

    • For the sake of calm, unity and elimination of divisiveness, fear-mongering and fake news needs to be deplatformed. See, now things are going great!

    • So let's make shit up!

      Official stats may be a mystery on the entire citizenry, but that doesn't mean things are being made up. They are reporting on numbers and figures they are getting from places. There's a big difference.

  • They f*cking declared Kim Fat The Third (as he is known in neighbouring countries) dead 10+ times in the last year. He, however, is still alive and kicking and probably for the better. If he dies, most of his functions will probably end up in the hands of his sister and you simply cannot say sissster with enough menace to express just how far off the deep end is that genocidal b*tch.
    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Yeah, and it looks like she keeps in better shape so if El Porko goes to the Great Food Bowl in the Sky, she'll be riding shotgun over the country for awhile.

  • That's an oxymoron if there ever was one! I mean, why even bother speculating about it?

    North Korean covid stats only serves one purpose: It's a nice canary for any news article. If it includes data from NK, you know you can stop reading right there.

  • send in dennis rodman to get the real info!

  • by hackingbear ( 988354 ) on Friday January 22, 2021 @03:07PM (#60979886)

    North Korea has always been mostly isolated from the world. I would also speculate that there were even fewer tourists during winter time when the pandemic started. So it is entirely possible and scientific that there have been next to zero cases over there.

    I remember:

    * when the pandemic first hit Wuhan and China, the we (the western media) ridiculed them in a tone of celebration;
    * when Wuhan implemented strict lock down of the 11-million-people city, we, including our experts, ridiculed them for doing something that "proven" to be ineffective;
    * when the pandemic surged in Iran, we ridiculed them in a tone of celebration and pushed the theory of cover-up because of some satellite images of grave yards;
    * when the number of cases started climbing up in the western world, we pushed the theory of cover-up of the extend of the outbreaks from some unconfirmed anecdotes written by someone who tried to sell books on the western market;
    * when the cases in the western world exceeded all expectations, we blame China for not locking down earlier;
    * when outbreak in Taiwan, an isolated island province of China -- at least geographically, seems under control, we praise their success as the success of democracy, while ignoring the fact that Fujian, a more populous province within mainland China and across the Taiwan Strait, had even fewer cases;
    * when Vietnam, which shares the border and has huge amount of commerce with China, controlled its outbreak, we kept silent

    No, the discussion is not about science or statistics. It's about political boosting of our egos.

    • North Korea has always been mostly isolated from the world.

      If by "always", you mean "since the Korean War", can't argue too much.

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      We? Where do you get this we from? If you meant the previous (alleged) administration, they'd be lucky to find any of those countries on the map.

    • we, including our experts, ridiculed them for doing something that "proven" to be ineffective

      Citation needed. I would like to see any infectious disease "expert" claiming that preventing mobility of a virus is ineffective. They may admit it's not a good idea socially but even back in Feb there was a lot of talk on how to stop viral spread and the central message in most of the western expert discourse seemed to be, "How do we prevent spread without resorting to a complete lockdown?".

      Hell Italy was placing large parts of it's northern cities under lockdown back in Feb as well on expert advice on how

  • they're mostly an agrarian nation (and a poor one at that) and have very little travel, so they're not going to have the population density & travel for it to be like say, New York City. But yeah, I somehow doubt they've got it as under control as China much less Vietnam or Australia. They just don't have the resources.

    Then again you can do a lot when you've got a complete total disregard for human rights...
    • They are also an asian nation. I'm not sure there is an asian nation with a high deaths/M count. Even Philippines has less than 100 deaths/M which is totally unexpected (no it is not bad count, you can't hide so many deads). I bet they can say thank you to some kind of environment factor, demography or genetic.
    • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      They don't have the resources to deal with a large number of infections...
      However when it comes to preventing a large number of infections they absolutely do.
      Where western countries have implemented lockdowns, this is something new to both the police and population. People are used to travelling freely etc. People in North Korea are not, lockdowns, curfew and travel restrictions are normal there. The police know how to implement such restrictions and have a lot of practice doing so while the people are used

  • Who cares if they aren't reporting their handful of cases. The more important question is whether the Chinese have committed to providing NK with vaccines. This needs to be a worldwide effort, or a pandemic will happen once a decade from here on out.
  • by schweini ( 607711 ) on Friday January 22, 2021 @03:17PM (#60979942)
    COVID19 cases in North Korea:

    2:00 pm - 1
    2:01 pm - 0

    2:56 pm - 1
    2:58 pm - 0

    ...
  • by Serif ( 87265 ) on Friday January 22, 2021 @03:25PM (#60979974)

    The North Koreans were pretty quick to close their border with China once China announced they had a problem, but that border saw a lot of trade for several months whilst the alarm hadn't been raised. Considering how hard the neighboring South Eastern Chinese provinces were originally hit, I find it very hard to believe that the virus did not cross the border.

    As regards how many cases they have, I can't believe that satellite imaging isn't able to provide some answers. When Brazil was suffering under the first wave I remember seeing images of graveyards being extended and rows of freshly dug graves. I can only think that some satellite sources are considered too sensitive that they should be exposed just to confirm this point.

  • "Some have accused North Korea of lying, while others suggest its approach is all about keeping control and public perception."

    Those aren't mutually exclusive, you know....

  • China, too - lots of new lockdowns in Beijing, and Shanghai is closing hospitals all over because staff are sick (from hundreds of patients). Not officially announced, of course - but talk to friends and family in China, and the real story comes out.
  • "Some have accused North Korea of lying, while others suggest its approach is all about keeping control and public perception."

    So... some have accused them of lying, while others... have accused them of lying. I suspect that they're lying.

  • ... so how could there be cases?

  • All official messaging is controlled by Kim Jong-un's regime

    Sounds like they have "disinformation" under control over there!

  • Kim Yo Jong, sister of Kim Jong Un, might poison you to death: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/W... [upi.com]

Order and simplification are the first steps toward mastery of a subject -- the actual enemy is the unknown. -- Thomas Mann

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