After North Korea acknowledged its first COVID-19 outbreak, it said about 3.3 million people came down with fever but only 69 have died. Experts say the impoverished country would likely have suffered more deaths because it has few people vaccinated.
The most likely course is that North Korea soon proclaims victory over COVID-19, maybe during a June political meeting, with all credit given to Kim’s leadership. The 38-year-old ruler is desperate, observers say, to win bigger public support as he deals with severe economic difficulties caused by border shutdowns, U.N. sanctions and his own mismanagement.
It was initially seen as an attempt to exploit the outbreak to get foreign humanitarian assistance. There were hopes that possible aid by Seoul and Washington could help resume long-stalled diplomacy on Pyongyang’s nuclear program. North Korea’s daily fever tally peaked at nearly 400,000 early last week; it has nosedived to around 100,000 in the past few days. On Friday, it added one more death after claiming no fatalities for three consecutive days.
“North Korea wouldn’t really care about fatalities at all,” said Choi Jung Hun, a defector who worked as a doctor in North Korea in the 2000s. “Many North Koreans have already died of malaria, measles, chickenpox and typhoid. There are all kind of infectious diseases there.”
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