Day: May 13, 2022

North Korea acknowledged its first confirmed COVID-19 cases and at least one death from the disease on Thursday, after more than two years of claiming the country was “virus free.”

The state-run Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that 187,800 people are undergoing treatment in quarantine for a fever of unknown origin that has spread throughout the country since the end of last month.

The report did not specify how many people had tested positive for COVID-19.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un presided over a meeting of the Politburo where he ordered a nationwide lockdown and declared a “maximum emergency epidemic prevention system,” KCNA said Thursday.

A resident of Pyongyang told RFA’s Korean Service that the capital Pyongyang was on lockdown after health authorities in the city confirmed a case of the virus two days before.

“At 5 p.m. [Tuesday], an emergency directive from the national emergency quarantine command of the Central Party’s Political Bureau was issued to all parts of Pyongyang. Specific project details were delivered to the city’s various levels of units, enterprises and the neighborhood watch units in implementing the quarantine project to the maximum emergency quarantine system,” the source said on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“The instructions are to prohibit group gatherings, strictly observe personal hygiene, social distance, wash our hands frequently, boil water before drinking it, gargling with salt water frequently to disinfect, and properly ventilate the indoor air to prevent coronavirus,” the source said.

There have been many instances of hospital patients exhibiting signs of COVID-19, but quarantine authorities had been diagnosing cases as pneumonia or the flu, the source said.

“Residents are confused why the quarantine authorities are suddenly acknowledging coronavirus. Shops, restaurants and marketplaces are all closed. If the lockdown is prolonged, it will disrupt the lives of the residents,” said the source.

In the city of Sinuiju in North Pyongan province, across the Yalu River from China, a complete lockdown was underway on Wednesday, a resident there told RFA.

“All sectors, including the party, administrative organizations, economic organizations, the police, state security and the armed forces, emphasized the thorough implementation of the instructions of the national emergency quarantine command,” said the second source on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“It is the first time that we have acknowledged the influx of COVID-19 and it is the stealth Omicron variant. Authorities are reassuring residents that it is a virus similar to pneumonia or flu and can be overcome with domestically produced drugs,” the second source said.

This source said that a relative in Pyongyang had said that that starting tomorrow an intensive medical screening for all city residents will start. Already citizens are prohibited from going to work, increasing the level of economic anxiety in the country at a time when many are already struggling to get by.

“The people are about to fall into a period of chaos, as they cannot even make ends meet prior to the emergency,” the second source said.

Vaccine status

The World Health Organization (WHO) told RFA on Thursday that it has not yet received information from North Korea’s Ministry of Health regarding the confirmed COVID-19 case as reported by KCNA.

North Korea is eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines through the COVAX global vaccine sharing project, the WHO said. Pyongyang refused to accept vaccines from COVAX earlier in the pandemic when it was still claiming to be “virus-free.”

Reuters reported that Washington has no immediate plans to share vaccines with Pyongyang, quoting a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council.

Amnesty International called on the North Korean government to ensure that its people were immunized against the disease, which is now estimated to have killed more than 6 million people across the globe.

“There is no evidence to show that North Korea has access to enough vaccines to protect its population from COVID-19,” Boram Jang, Amnesty International’s East Asia researcher, said.

“With the first official news of a Covid-19 outbreak in the country, continuing on this path could cost many lives and would be an unconscionable dereliction of upholding the right to health,” she said. “The North Korean government should immediately establish plans to secure COVID-19 vaccines for its population by cooperating with the international community.”

Strategy

North Korea’s timing in acknowledging that the virus has entered its borders is “noteworthy,” Soo Kim, a former CIA analyst now with the RAND corporation, told RFA.

“The international community never turned a blind eye toward North Korea’s coronavirus situation; it was the Kim regime that consistently rejected offers of PPE and vaccines on unjustifiable grounds,” she said.

“It’s possible that the situation with the coronavirus in North Korea has significantly worsened to a point where the regime can no longer suppress it or cope on its own. But then the question remains — the situation could have been contained had the Kim regime accepted international assistance from the beginning. So why now?” she said.

Soo Kim said that economic anxiety, rather than public health concerns, may have motivated North Korea to stray from its claims of having zero confirmed cases.

“Extensive lockdown, border closures, and Kim’s already incompetent state management can only take him so far in suppressing the realities of the pandemic,” she said.

Harry Kazianis, the president and CEO at the Rogue States project, told RFA that COVID-19 has been present in North Korea since the beginning of the pandemic. 

“However, over the last few months as Omicron has crept into the country, North Korean officials cannot use the same brute force tactics of locking people in their homes or isolating entire villages as spread happens so fast. So now, Pyongyang must admit to their being a problem as there is no way no they can hide it,” he said.

“Unless North Korea suffers tens of thousands of casualties I doubt the DPRK will ask for help at this point. They do not want to show any weakness at all and want to always project an image of strength and control of their population. Asking for help would be, in the DPRK’s eyes, an admission of failure,” Kazianis said. 

Translated by Leejin J. Chung and Dukin Han. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

The ongoing upheaval in Myanmar took center stage on the first day of a U.S.-ASEAN Summit in Washington, as fellow bloc member Malaysia slammed the junta for refusing to engage with the country’s shadow government.

Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders held a lunch meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other lawmakers at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday to kick off two days of top-level meetings, which President Joe Biden hopes will bolster Washington’s ties with the bloc and increase its influence in the region.

Eight of ASEAN’s leaders made the trip to the U.S. for the summit, which marks the first time the White House extended an invitation to the group of nations in more than four decades. The Philippines declined to attend as it wraps up a presidential election this week, while Myanmar’s junta chief, Snr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, was barred from the summit amid a brutal crackdown on opponents of his military’s Feb. 1, 2021, coup that rights groups say has claimed the lives of at least 1,835 civilians.

U.S. State Department officials instead met with the foreign minister of the National Unity Government, Myanmar’s shadow government of deposed leaders and other junta critics working to take back control of the country.

The lunch event on Capitol Hill was closed to the press, but the situation in Myanmar was front and center on Thursday, after Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah called out junta officials in a series of tweets for failing to honor their commitment to end violence in the country. Specifically, he referred to the military regime’s refusal to allow the United Nations special envoy to the country, Noeleen Heyzer, to attend an ASEAN meeting last week to coordinate humanitarian aid to Myanmar.

“We regret that the [junta] has not allowed the U.N. Secretary General’s Special Envoy on Myanmar to participate in the processes,” Saifuddin tweeted.

“We should not allow [the junta to be] dictating who to be invited for related meetings.”

Saifuddin said he made clear at an informal meeting with ASEAN foreign ministers on Wednesday that Malaysia fully supports Prak Sokhonn, the special envoy of ASEAN Chair Cambodia, “in fulfilling his mandate on [the] 5-Point Consensus” — an agreement formed by the bloc in April 2021 that requires the junta to meet with all of Myanmar’s stakeholders to find a solution to the political crisis.

He said he called on the ASEAN envoy to “engage all stakeholders, including [shadow National Unity Government] NUG and [National Unity Consultative Council] NUCC representatives,” both of which are recognized by the junta as “terrorist groups.”

Saifuddin’s comments came a day after he told the RFA-affiliated BenarNews agency that he welcomed the idea of engaging informally with the NUG and NUCC via video conference calls and other means if the junta prohibits such meetings in-person.

The Malaysian foreign minister said he plans to meet with NUG Foreign Minister Zin Mar Aung in Washington on Saturday to solicit her opinion on how the people of Myanmar can move on.

As ASEAN leaders lunched with lawmakers on Thursday, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman held a meeting with Zin Mar Aung and other NUG representatives in Washington during which she underscored the Biden administration’s support for the people of Myanmar during the crackdown and for those working to restore the country to democracy, according to a statement by spokesperson Ned Price.

“Noting the many Southeast Asian leaders in Washington for the U.S.-ASEAN Special Summit, the deputy secretary highlighted that the United States would continue to work closely with ASEAN and other partners in pressing for a just and peaceful resolution to the crisis in Burma,” Price said, using the former name of Myanmar.

“They also condemned the escalating regime violence that has led to a humanitarian crisis and called for unhindered humanitarian access to assist all those in need in Burma.”

Other events

Following Thursday’s working lunch, ASEAN leaders met with Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, as well as other leaders of the business community, to discuss economic cooperation.

In the evening, they joined Biden for dinner at the White House to discuss ASEAN’s future and how the U.S. can play a part, according to media reports, which quoted senior administration officials as saying that each leader would be given time to meet with the president one-on-one.

On Friday, leaders will meet with Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken for a working lunch to discuss issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the global climate, and maritime security, before meeting with Biden for a second time.

While some ASEAN leaders have been more outspoken in their condemnation of the junta, others —including Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who is also the bloc’s chair — have done little to hold it to account for the situation in Myanmar.

In January, Hun Sen became the first foreign leader to visit Myanmar since the military coup — a trip widely viewed as conferring legitimacy on the junta.

Hun Sen is no stranger to global condemnation, however. The Cambodian strongman brooks no criticism at home and has jailed his opponents on what observers say are politically motivated charges in a bid to bar them from mounting a challenge his nearly 40-year rule.

This week’s summit marks Hun Sen’s fourth visit to the U.S., following trips to attend his son’s graduation from West Point in 1999, the 2016 U.S.-ASEAN Summit with President Barack Obama at the Sunnylands Retreat in California, and a meeting at the United Nations in New York in 2018. Thursday’s dinner with Biden will be his first visit to the White House.

Prior to Thursday’s dinner, during a photo session with leaders on the South Lawn, Biden committed to spending U.S. $150 million on COVID-19 prevention, security, and infrastructure in Southeast Asia as part of a package his administration hopes will contain China’s growing influence in the region.

A U.S. Coast Guard ship will also be deployed to the region to patrol waters ASEAN nations say are illegally fished by Chinese vessels.

The U.S. commitment is a drop in the bucket compared to Beijing’s spending in the region. China earmarked 10 times as much in development assistance to ASEAN nations in November alone.