Kim Jong-un
North Korea lied about “miraculous victory” in the COVID-19 pandemic, reveals a new report based on North Korean interviews. Fear worsened everything: there was “duplication of misinformation.”
Only 74 pandemic deaths. The “unprecedented miracle in the history of world public health” celebrated by North Korea was, after all, a disinformation campaign.
The conclusions are from a new report by two US research organizations, which unveiled a deadly lie that cost much more lives than the nation led by Kim Jong-un reported on that isolated Asian country.
During the pandemic, Pyongyang insisted that he had won the virus that devastated the whole world without resort to vaccines. He said he had only 74 deaths and no confirmed case until mid -2022. But the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the George W. Bush Institute says something very different.
According to the new report, the North Korean government deliberately misrepresented the severity of the crisis, hidden outbreaks and deprived essential health care citizens.
Based on interviews with 100 people inside North Korea, conducted through intermediaries in 2023, the report points to diseases and deaths across the country, with a woman recalling that in the winter of 2020 there were so many deaths in homes of elderly people who “There were not even enough coffins.”
After all the country could not resist two years to deaths: people started dying by Covid-19 in 2020, accuses the new report.
Most respondents confirmed that they were never tested for COVID-19. Many suspected that they themselves or people nearby had contracted the virus. Forty people said they never received any dose of vaccine during the pandemic, according to.
And the factor fear It further affected the country’s situation at this time troubled. Both local and citizens avoided reporting infections or deaths for fearing reprisals for contradicting the official narrative. Those who expressed symptoms were at risk of forced detention or collective confinement.
The report describes this phenomenon as a “Duplication of misinformation”in which government and citizens were mistakenly mistaken, favoring the spread of the virus.
As a preventive measure, North Korea closed its borders in early 2020, giving orders to shoot against anyone who tried to cross them. Only those in August 2024.
The regime maintained the allegation of “zero cases” until May 2022, when finally admitted an outbreak. Just three months later, state media announced a “Brilliant victory” about the virusattributing the merit to the “indomitable will” of leader Kim Jong-un. When the internal outbreak was finally recognized, the regime accused South Korea of introducing the virus in the country – A theory in which even today more than a third of respondents in the report believe, although testimonies have not been independently verified.
