North Korea has lifted all corona measures. In a speech distributed by the state news agency, President Kim Jong-un declared the country’s pandemic over. ARD correspondent Kathrin Erdmann blames factors other than medical factors for the surprising news from the isolated country.
SRF News: North Korea declares the pandemic defeated and lifts all measures. What does that mean specifically?
Kathrin Erdmann: It’s mainly about the quarantine measures. According to information from Pyongyang, there were mobile teams that came to people with a fever and did a PCR or antibody test. A quarantine was then ordered. However, we do not know exactly what this looked like.
Kim Jong-un spoke of a ‘medical miracle’.
Travel restrictions within North Korea are also likely to have been lifted. North Korea has defeated the corona virus, it said. Kim Jong-un spoke of a “medical miracle”.
How credible is that?
It was a victory with promise: the regime in Pyongyang had already claimed at the end of July that there were no more new “fever” cases, and long before that it had been reported that there were no more deaths. But all this is very doubtful, to say the least. According to official figures, 20 percent of the population had the “fever”, i.e. were infected with the corona virus.
There are serious doubts about the information from Pyongyang.
The death rate is said to have been 0.002 percent – but that would have been lower than in New Zealand or Japan, both of which have the fewest corona deaths. The peak in time for deaths as a result of the “fever” in North Korea is also doubtful: it was identified before the peak of the pandemic. So there are serious doubts about the information.
What are the motives behind the North Korean regime’s strategy?
North Korea is apparently hit by floods once again, which could have destroyed a large part of the harvest. Also, North Korea has offered workers to Moscow, so there are signs that North Korea could be under severe pressure. If the pandemic is now declared over, the country can be opened up again, for example by sending workers to Russia. So foreign exchange would come back into the country.
A Covid case was officially reported for the first time only three months ago. What is known about the course of the pandemic in North Korea?
Apparently the Politburo met daily for analysis. The course of the pandemic varied greatly depending on the region, with most cases occurring in the border regions. Despite a lockdown, work continued across the country, apparently one did not want to give the impression that the whole country was sick.
Most people died from improper medication.
According to a publication on the causes of death in the “fever” cases, most people died from incorrect medication – the whole thing has meanwhile taken on grotesque forms. The sick were advised to gargle with salt water. North Korean planes have also been spotted in China. They could have gotten vaccine there or, more likely, test kits.
The interview was conducted by Claudia Weber.