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Kim Jong-un anunció un confinamiento nacional por un brote de covid el 12 de mayo. Era la primera vez que aparecía en televisión con mascarilla. Anthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Durante dos años, la aislada Corea del Norte alegó haber tenido éxito en mantener alejada a la covid, e incluso rechazó varias ofertas de vacunas, a las que calificó de innecesarias. El mes pasado, eso cambió.

En una serie de notas urgentes, los medios estatales de Corea del Norte anunciaron que una fiebre no especificada se estaba propagando “explosivamente”. La nación comenzó un confinamiento. Se han reportado más de cuatro millones de casos y decenas de muertes.

Es un escenario aterrador para una nación de 25 millones de personas, con problemas de desnutrición y sin esquemas de vacunación. Pero las malas noticias no salen de Corea del Norte sin alguna razón.…  Seguir leyendo »

Kim Jong-un appeared in a face mask on television for the first time on May 12 to announce a nationwide Covid lockdown. Anthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

For more than two years, isolated North Korea claimed success in keeping out Covid and even rebuffed multiple offers of vaccines, calling them unnecessary. Last month, that changed.

In a series of urgent dispatches, North Korea’s state media announced that an unspecified fever was spreading “explosively”. The nation went into lockdown. More than four million cases have been reported, with dozens of deaths.

It’s a frightening prospect for an unvaccinated, undernourished nation of 25 million people. But bad news does not escape North Korea without a reason. Finally acknowledging a viral outbreak may be part of a strategy by its leader, Kim Jong-un, to re-engage with the outside world.…  Seguir leyendo »

The empty streets near the Pyongyang Railway Station are seen as people stay away due to a lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19 in Pyongyang, North Korea, on May 27. Kim Won Jin/AFP via Getty Images

As a COVID-19 wave engulfs North Korea, the question of reunification is moving to the fore. Tragically divided in the aftermath of World War II, the peninsula essentially suffered through a low-grade civil war in the decades since the Korean War ended.

Stitching together the two very different Koreas long looked improbable. However, North Korea is ill-prepared for a viral tsunami. Although it is premature to predict the Kim Jong Un dynasty’s doom, it would be foolish not to prepare for the possibility.

North Korea is one of only two countries that made no effort to vaccinate its people. (Eritrea, oft called the North Korea of Africa, is the other.)…  Seguir leyendo »

Three generations of totalitarian misrule have left North Korea woefully incapable of containing, or even suppressing, a coronavirus epidemic. The same intelligent (and malevolent) design that has turned the country into the world’s most exquisitely oppressive police state has also inadvertently converted it into a prospective infection deathtrap.

North Korea’s notorious gulag camps and prisons, as well as its military barracks, are petri-dishes-in-waiting for communicable disease. The government’s worst-in-class transparency practices ensure that it will automatically censor information (bad news in particular) that might help identify the coronavirus and limit its spread. Longstanding economic failure means that much of the population is poorly nourished and vulnerable to infection.…  Seguir leyendo »

A health-care worker takes the temperature of a woman at an entrance to the Pyongchon District People's Hospital in Pyongyang on April 1. (Kim Won Jin/AFP via Getty Images)

In early March, North Korea triumphantly declared that it had absolutely no cases of the covid-19 virus. Yet most analysts agree that available evidence suggests the opposite. If the regime’s previous behavior in crises is any indication, we should expect it to respond with deceit, aggression and militarism, including increased arms-testing. Sadly, many North Koreans will likely die in the process.

In the 1990s, North Korea endured a catastrophic famine that likely killed millions. The North Korean government faced a series of shocks, including flooding, crop failure and the sudden end of Soviet subsidies. Government incompetence, indifference and theft of precious aid supplies all contributed to the chaos.…  Seguir leyendo »