There’s One Reason Kim Jong Un Is Loving North Korea’s COVID Outbreak
SEOUL—The spread of COVID-19 in North Korea is not all bad news for leader Kim Jong Un. By locking down the entire country, he can assert the power of his regime as never before. He has the authority to arrest anyone perceived to have broken the rules for any reason, whether in quest of food or the need to see a friend or to look for medicine.
He can also blame the scourge on a network of health officials. Their survival is now in jeopardy. Some of them, having been in contact with victims of the disease, may be ill, but all have to fear for their lives while Kim investigates how the disease broke out on a mass level. He’s calling for “correcting deviations revealed in the supply of medicines” when it’s well known North Korean medical facilities are largely bereft of medicine of any kind, much less any capable of curing COVID-19.
To show he means business, Kim fell back on a familiar wellspring of support, his 1.2-million-man armed forces over which he is the supreme commander. Pyongyang’s Korea Central News agency said he had issued an order for “immediately stabilizing the supply of medicines in Pyongyang City by involving the powerful forces of the military medical field of the People's Army.”