An unspecified quarantine breach caused great crisis, North Korea’s leader King Jong Un says

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un stated that a “grave” scenario has arisen as a result of the quarantine mismanagement, emphasising the grave threats that could undermine his country’s power after his regime had denied any infections.

There were no details of the nature of any incident in a report from the government’s official Korean Central News Agency on Wednesday. According to Kim, cadres failed to carry out critical choices for long-term national quarantine operations due to dereliction of duty, “creating a great crisis in ensuring the security of the nation and the safety of the people,” KCNA reported.

According to the report, “he seriously pointed out that the chronic irresponsibility and incompetence of cadres at present bring artificial difficulties to the implementation of the Party’s policies and become a major brake doing tremendous harm to the development of the revolutionary work.”

Despite North Korea’s claim that it has no cases of the coronavirus, a claim that has been questioned by US and Japanese experts, the regime has adopted harsh quarantine measures that have exacerbated the regime’s economic troubles, including sealing its border with China. COVID-19 poses a significant threat to the impoverished state, whose ageing medical infrastructure might easily be overwhelmed by an infectious disease. COVID-19 poses a real risk to the moisture from the air, whose obsolete medical systems may easily be overloaded by an outbreak.

“It would be a bit hasty to make any definitive conclusions based on the KCNA report, given it lacked in detail. But North Korea now has been a particularly sensitive about the pandemic as already lacks the testing kits and the medical facilities,” said Cheong Seong-chang, director of the Unification Strategy Studies Program at Sejong Institute near Seoul.

North Korea sees the virus as a threat to its already struggling economy and Kim’s rule, Cheong added further.

North Korea’s GDP is on course worse to grow in 2021, according to Fitch Solutions, as the government riddled with both the epidemic, border limitations with China, and worldwide measures taken in response to its radioactive fallout.

Pyongyang has taken strong action after incidents that could expose the country to the virus. Almost about one year is going to finish, Kim’s regime locked down the border city of Kaesong out of fear the person who defected from South Korea may have carried the virus forwards, its official media said.

Adding to COVID risks, North Korea has received no vaccine doses through Covax and according to Gavi, the nonprofit group that delivers immunizations. “Work is ongoing and discussions continue,” it said in a statement in June.

According to Japan’s Kyodo News, North Korea was meant to get about 1.7 million doses of the AstraZeneca Plc injection by the end of May, but shipments were delayed due to the North Korea’s refusal to obey Covax guidelines and the rules.

North Korea is qualified for immunizations under a World Health Organization-backed programme, but it has showed reluctance. The country’s modest international presence of foreign officials and citizens shrank throughout the pandemic as they were pressured to leave. Bringing in additional individuals from outside the country to distribute vaccines could be seen as a risk by the Kim administration.

The country’s main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, expressed doubt about vaccines in an article in June, saying they “may not be able to protect people from the virus spreading or new strains of the virus.”