Coronavirus in North Korea

The Quarantine Zone
1

Would have liked to post this on GQ but I don’t think a factual answer is available.

What’s the best guess of the coronavirus situation in North Korea? According to wikipedia, there are officially no cases in the country, but South Korean “sources” (whatever that means) report that 180-200 army members have died, with an unknown number of deaths in the civilian population.

ISTM that how the pandemic is handled in NK may be very different from how it’s handled in most of the rest of the world. Because of that, data on what actions were taken, how many people were infected, how they were treated and how many died could be very important.

Can we (by which I mean the rest of the world) know? If so, when will we know?

2

Just my guess, but they are probably more deeply screwed than most.

3

Under existing policy, there is virtually zero chance that a North Korean will have proximal contact with a person that is contagious. The vast majority in NK have never even seen a human being who has physically been outside the country during his lifetime. So how could the virus be transmitted to a North Korean?

Unlike Cuba, which has a robust toutsit industry.

4

It was my understanding that there was trade with and even tourism from China, particularly the Korean-speaking bit of China just to the north.

5

I thought there is usually a fairly robust transmission of people between North Korea across the border into China – 50,000 North Korean workers in Chinese factories, some of them must go home sometimes. Half of North Korea’s foreign trade is with China. I don’t see how they could keep it out. And with the dictator’s determination not to admit that there is any Covid-19 in their country, the kinds of measures that other countries are taking would not happen. He might call it a bad flu season and try to keep it down under that excuse. He might view it as a way to reduce excess population, especially if it carries away mostly old people, or old people are given less medical care and so more of them die. I can see him making that kind of calculation.

6

Good point, the highest risk demographics tend to be the least productive. It’s like how East Germany didn’t care if pensioners left and never came back, only more extreme.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk

7

Here are the stats about the COVID-19 cases in North Korea:

1st March 2020 10:19 — 1 Case
2nd March 2020 10:32 — 0 Case
3rd March 2020 13:11 — 5 Case
4th March 2020 13:15 — 0 Case
5th March 2020 20:24 — 2 Case
6th March 2020 20:35 — 0 Case
7th March 2020 10:17 — 1 Case
8th March 2020 10:39 — 0 Case
10th March 2020 16:45 — 5 Case
11th March 2020 17:01 — 0 Case
12th March 2020 18:34 — 3 Case
13th March 2020 19:05 — 0 Case

Nice joke, isn’t it? :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

8

What do they call it? ‘Social Distancing’? Me and North Korea are on the forefront of that shit.

9

200 army members? Young people have a very low death rate and soldiers in North Korea are probably in their 20s.

Wouldn’t 200 dead people in their 20s imply that you needed 50k minimum infected people of all age groups to get that kind of death rate among people in their 20s?

Im guessing North Korea will ignore the situation while kim sits in a gold bunker playing Xbox and eating kobe beef. When it’s all over he will emerge and the state media will praise his leadership.

10

North Korea has no need to track covid-19 deaths. They simply list these deaths under the usual column of, “Deaths By Starvation”.

11

Generals are older … and more likely to have been in contact with outsiders.

@Maverock :confused:

12

The northern border is quite porous and there is a lot of smuggling back and forth. The Yalu River is shallow and easily crossed. While there are many guards, people find ways to get by them and many guards can be bribed.

The reasons that relatively few people escape and make it to South Korea have More to do with the difficulties of getting to the border and then getting out of China than the difficulty of crossing the border itself. (The DMZ is another story of course)

That said, Wuhan is nowhere near the Korean border and other regions of China have managed to clamp down on the spread of the virus. I assume it’s gotten in anyway, and since North Koreans have to attend community “educational” meetings regularly, social distancing would be impossible. They also wouldn’t have an array of disinfectants and other preventative measures easily available. Perhaps the internal travel restrictions would slow down transmission from one area to another, but once it gets into population, it would likely spread very quickly.

13

He’s joking that they’re killing the infected every time a few cases pop up.

14

I’m going to assume a lot of people in North Korea are in very poor health. Remember when that soldier defected and he had all those parasitic worms and hepatitis.

I also just read something saying 81% of defectors have tuberculosis, I don’t think even being a soldier means you are healthy. This disease could probably wipe out a lot of their population.