COVID-19 RAVAGES NORTH KOREA

2.8M have experienced “fever” and sickness and 479,400 people are in treatment. This represents 11 percent of the North Korean population who may have contracted COVID-19
President Biden, during a visit with newly elected South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol shared in a joint appearance with president Yoon "We've offered vaccines, not only to North Korea but to China as well, and we're prepared to do that immediately… we've got no response."
State media has recommended remedies such as herbal tea, gargling salt-water and taking painkillers such as ibuprofen.

EXHAUSTED PYONGYANG RESIDENTS FORCED TO ATTEND 17-HOUR “COVID-SUPERSPREADER" MILITARY PARADE

North Korea hosted an extravagant military parade on April 25, 2022 where it gathered more than 20,000 soldiers to showcase its military equipment, including the Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile, to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army.
Kim Jong-un praised students and young workers who participated in the parade for their “patriotism and high enthusiasm for the revolution and struggle.” However, participants said the parade did little to improve morale and a resident of Chongjin told Radio Free Asia that “[residents] did not hide their disappointment, saying that no one believed the authorities’ propaganda.”
A city official said that the event was only publicly announced just before it began, and “[from] the dawn on the 25th, about 100,000 Pyongyang citizens waited at Kim Il Sung Square for 17 hours to make the military parade possible...[they] were all totally exhausted.”
Sources also revealed that since Pyongyang citizens have been trying to avoid parade duties, the government began to force them to practise watching or marching in parades two months in advance, “[now] the number of participants are assigned to each neighborhood watch unit and they are forcibly mobilized.” Citizens complained that they were unable to do business during the two-month practice period and were not compensated for their loss.
To ensure Kim Jong-un's security, authorities blocked all mobile communications in Pyongyang and even instructed participants to dress in black until just before the ceremony started in order to avoid being detected by satellites.

Source:
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/parade-04292022195652.html
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20220502000125&np=1&mp=1
https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3177889/coronavirus-superspreader-military-parade-blamed-deadly-north
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/covid-05132022203718.html

HUNGRY NORTH KOREAN WORKERS IN CHINA WORK BEHIND CLOSED DOORS AMIDST LOCKDOWN

A source told Daily NK that North Korean factory workers in the city of Dandong, China have remained in their dormitories under orders to keep working behind closed doors since their plants shut down following regional Covid-19 lockdowns.
The source added that those managing the workers were supposed to bulk buy food through a Chinese shopping strategy called “group buying” but had failed to do so, which resulted in the challenges of acquiring food with the current implementation of bans on movement.
Although the managers have now picked up on the “group buying” method, workers were not receiving sufficient food due to the soaring food prices in China. The cost of eggs, for instance, have more than tripled in price since the lockdown began and a head of cabbage which used to cost approx. $0.29 USD is now a shocking $7.37 USD.
North Koreans workers struggled to send authorities a set quota of “loyalty funds” since the Chinese factories shut down, resulting in a cut in their monthly wages.
Nonetheless, many workers who used to work 10 to 12 hours a day all month for less than RMB 500 (approx. $73.73 USD) said that they could now rest, despite being frustrated about the lack of support from the North Korean embassy in China.

Source:
https://www.dailynk.com/english/north-korean-workers-china-face-challenges-purchasing-enough-food-amid-lockdowns/

JUDGE FEARS NORTH KOREA COULD MURDER U.S. MARINE VET

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jean Rosenbluth issued an unusual decision concerning her order for the extradition of Christopher Ahn, a former U.S. Marine veteran who took part in a raid on North Korea’s Madrid embassy in February 2019, to face trial in Spain.
Ahn claimed in his case that he was part of an anti-North Korea group called “Free Joseon (Free Korea)” who had entered the embassy to help North Koreans who wanted to defect.
According to court documents, the group left the building with computer drives, a cell phone, and other electronic information, which they later turned over to the FBI.
Ahn returned to California after the incident and was arrested in April 2019. Spain later sought his extradition on 6 criminal charges carrying a potential sentence of over 10 years in prison.
Judge Rosenbluth wrote in her ruling that “[in] part because of his participation in the embassy incident, North Korea wants to kill Ahn...I must decide whether to certify his extradition to Spain, where North Korea can much more easily murder him. Although I conclude that the law requires me to certify, I do not think it’s the right result, and I hope that a higher court will either tell me I’m wrong or itself block the extradition.”
During an interview with Fox News last year, Ahn expressed his disappointment that “[the] same Department of Justice that has told me that if I leave the country that I could be assassinated is the same Department of Justice that’s trying to extradite me.”

Source:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/judge-warns-north-korea-murder-us-marine-vet-spain-rcna28154
https://nypost.com/2022/05/10/us-judge-forced-to-allow-extradition-of-ex-marine-christopher-ahn-to-spain-fears-hell-be-killed/
https://www.nknews.org/2022/05/us-judge-approves-extradition-of-american-who-raided-dprk-embassy-in-spain/

NORTH KOREA COMPLETES NUCLEAR TEST PREPARATIONS DESPITE COVID-19 OUTBREAK

South Korea’s spy agency revealed that there are signs North Korea could launch an intercontinental ballistic missile as part of its seventh nuclear test after completing its preparations amid Covid-19 outbreak.
Kim Byung-kee of the Democratic Party told reporters that “[it] would not be abnormal for North Korea to launch a missile or conduct a nuclear test at one point, as signs [of such provocations] are detected and Pyongyang has almost completed its preparations.”
The first deputy chief of South Korea’s presidential National Security Office, Kim Tae-hyo, also said that a nuclear launch appears to be “imminent.”

Source:
https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20220519006400320?section=nk/nk

LOCKING DOWN A STARVING NATION

North Korean state media, Rodong Sinmun, reported that Kim Jong-un told North Korean authorities to study and actively follow the “policies, successes, and experiences” of China. At the cost of significantly increasing the odds of mass starvation, their leader “called on all the cities and counties of the whole country to thoroughly lock down their areas and organize work and production after closing each working unit, production unit and living unit from each other so as to flawlessly and perfectly block the spread vacuum of the malicious virus.”

In a country that is on the brink of famine, the threat of COVID-19 appears to be second to the pressing food crisis, as a ruling party member in North Hamgyong province commented that “[people] are going to factories and to their places of work as normal. The authorities don’t want work to be disrupted...People are worried about how to survive.” The seriousness of the situation was reflected by their leader’s 2022 New Year remarks, which took many by surprise as he emphasized agricultural output, rather than the party’s favored nuclear weapons and missiles developments. Although starvation is no novelty to North Korea, the combination of food and healthcare insecurity matched with a deadly respiratory virus is a new and frightening challenge. Journalists in South Korea also reported signs of normal agricultural activity in farms to the south, suggesting there may be a rural-urban divide in how lockdowns are being implemented, especially during North Korea’s rice planting season, which runs from May through October.

KIM JONG-UN'S RESPONSE

At a meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party, Kim Jong-un criticized the “immaturity in the state capacity for coping with the crisis” which increased the “complexity and hardship” in fighting the pandemic. Following which, health officials have developed a COVID-19 treatment guide to prevent drug overdoses and medical mistreatments that resulted in many of the reported deaths, though it is unclear exactly what drugs are currently used to treat patients with COVID-19. Kim Jong-un also ordered the distribution of medicine released from state reserves and mobilized his army of nearly 3,000 members of the Korean People’s Army’s medical units to transport medical supplies to pharmacies in Pyongyang. Meanwhile, more than 1.4 million officials, teachers, and students in the public health sector were deployed to identify people with COVID-19 symptoms.

NORTH KOREA'S PANDEMIC RESPONSE THUS FAR

North Korea has fought the pandemic as a matter of “national survival” since COVID-19 emerged in China back in January 2020. As one of the first countries to close borders due to COVID-19, Pyongyang set up an “emergency quarantine command” specifically to deal with the spread of the virus and pledged that it would not open its borders until a cure was found. The COVID-19 measures taken extended beyond suspending trade with China, which plays a pivotal part in North Korea’s economy, to systematically rejecting humanitarian aid such as vaccines from foreign countries and even executing a citizen for bringing goods through customs in violation of Covid-related quarantine measures. The world's attention was once again drawn to the North’s strict restrictions when it announced that it would not participate in the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo due to concerns over potential exposure to COVID-19, which led to the country’s suspension from participating in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. By April 2021, many foreign diplomats left the isolated country amidst severe food and drug shortages. Later that month, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said the country was facing its “worst-ever situation” comparable to the great famine in the 1990’s and called the party to wage another Arduous March to fight the economic hardship.

Despite adopting harsh lockdown and enforcement measures, including the shoot-on-sight orders, North Korea’s self-proclaimed perfect zero-covid record was recently overrun by 1.5 million “fever” cases (a euphemism for suspected COVID-19, given the lack of testing capacity necessary to confirm diagnosis of COVID-19) that resulted in over 62 deaths to date. However, some observers noted that the number of reported cases lacks accuracy as authorities may deliberately underreport cases to disguise the seriousness of the crisis and ease the pressure on their leader. Not a single North Korean citizen is known to have received COVID-19 vaccination. An outbreak of the omicron variant within its borders could unleash a humanitarian crisis, especially in the context of a dire economy following trade suspensions, natural disasters, unfavorable harvests and widespread starvation, a broken healthcare system, and years of international sanctions imposed in response to ballistic missile tests.

Top NK Headlines - May 2022