At a meeting of the Korean Workers' Party, DPRK leader Kim Jong-un accused high-ranking officials of incompetence and irresponsibility in preventing the spread of coronavirus infection.
According to him, the mistakes made during the anti-epidemic work led to a kind of “serious incident” that endangered the security of the country and its population. He did not specify what kind of incident he was talking about.
Kim Jong-un also criticized officials for “outdated thinking that manifests itself among executives.”
According to Reuters, at the meeting, the leadership of North Korea announced the replacement of several members of the Politburo, secretaries of the Central Committee of the party and officials of several government agencies. The CCAK did not elaborate on whether this is due to Kim Jong-un's dissatisfaction with the way officials coped with duties to combat the pandemic.
Pyongyang has repeatedly reported that there is no coronavirus in the country. However, in July 2020, Kim Jong-un announced the first case of suspected COVID-19 and called an emergency meeting of the Politburo of the Labor Party. As follows from the data of the World Health Organization (WHO) as of the end of June 2021, the country has never reported a single case of infection or death from coronavirus.
In January 2020, the DPRK closed its land, sea and air borders, and also imposed severe restrictions on movement within the country. North Korea's health care system is severely lacking the resources, funding and technology needed to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak, the Financial Times notes. The country has access to vaccines through the WHO COVAX mechanism, but authorities have denied entry to foreign aid workers and medical experts to deliver drugs.
In the spring of this year, diplomats from different countries, as well as members of their families, began to leave the DPRK. Some of the embassies were closed. Due to the interrupted railway service, Russian diplomats had to return home by railcar from the DPRK border to the Hasan border station in the Primorsky Territory.
In May, the government newspaper Nodong Sinmun published an article in which the authorities warned citizens that winds from abroad could cause the spread of COVID-19 in the country and urged the population to be vigilant.
