After North Korea disclosed its first cases of coronavirus in May this year, many feared the worst for the isolated country’s unvaccinated and undernourished population.
For more than two years since the onset of the pandemic, the country’s totalitarian regime maintained that not a single person had tested positive for Covid-19 within its borders, a claim treated with scepticism by foreign public health experts.
But less than 10 days after suddenly admitting to a series of outbreaks across the country in May, an editorial in the state Rodong Sinmun newspaper declared that North Korea was “successfully overcoming” the crisis, trumpeting leader Kim Jong Un’s response and admonishing other countries for “weak” lockdown policies.