Kim Jong Un claimed a ‘brilliant victory' over Covid
Pyongyang announced its first official Covid-19 case in May 2022 – more than two years after the virus began spreading globally – and Kim Jong Un declared a 'brilliant victory' three months later, claiming to have stamped out the virus with only 74 total deaths.
However, interviews with 100 people inside the isolated country – conducted by the US-based think tanks the Centre for Strategic and International Studies and the George W. Bush Institute – suggested that the virus had been 'rampant' in North Korea since 2020.
Of those interviewed, at least 92 said they had either been infected or knew someone who had been, mostly between May 2020-March 2022, which 'suggests that the virus may have been widespread in the country long before the government's first publicly reported case,' the report's authors write.
The regime shut down its international borders and restricted internal travel from January 2020 until August 2023, pausing all trade, diplomacy, and the acceptance of humanitarian aid.
Government support 'virtually non-existent'
The report also shines further light on Pyongyang's draconian 'anti-epidemic' quarantine measures, which included tighter controls on freedom of movement and strict curfews.
The consequences for breaking the rules were severe, and included execution and being sent to forced labour camps.
One individual caught trying to smuggle food over the border with South Korea was sent to a labour camp for six months, the report said. Another person was sent to a camp for two days for not wearing a mask.
A healthcare worker who failed to 'properly disinfect a quarantine ward' at a local hospital was 'taken away under violation of wartime law'. It is unclear what happened to them.
The interviewees reported being treated like 'pigs' and having virtually no access to vaccines or treatment before the government reported its first case in May 2022, at which point the country reportedly received some assistance from China, mainly in the form of jabs.
One participant described the government's support for 'non-elite' citizens as 'virtually non-existent,' particularly during the first two years of the pandemic.
'In my country, only the central party cadres are considered people, and the real people are treated worse than pigs,' said another.
At least 57 of the 100 interviewees said they either had limited or no access to medicine, due largely to shortages after the regime halted trade and foreign assistance.
Many people reported being forced to purchase drugs on the black market, where prices become inflated as demand soared.
'No basic medicines such as antipyretic, anti-inflammatory, general cold medicine, diarrhoea medicine were available [...] or they were priced eight to 10 times higher,' said one interviewee.
Counterfeit drugs sold on the black market also led to severe illness and deaths during the pandemic, the report said.
'There were a lot of fake medicines, and people died because they couldn't use real medicine,' one person told the researchers.
Several people who were interviewed said that the pandemic exacerbated existing food shortages.
In January 2020, the government stopped importing grain from China, as well as the fertilisers and machinery needed to grow food and several people inside the country at the time reported friends and neighbours dying of starvation.
'The DPRK government developed nuclear weapons during Covid, but it didn't care about feeding its people,' one participant said.
Many people also died crossing the border in an attempt to escape during the pandemic, according to the report. 'The dead bodies were left there to become fish food,' said one interviewee.
The authors concluded the report by saying 'if the government had spoken truthfully about the pandemic and accepted outside help from 2020, many deaths could have been avoided.'
'As the interview results attest, the policies and brutality of Kim Jong Un's regime made worse a terrible situation sparked by the onset of Covid-19,' they added.
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