north korea has acknowledged its very
first cases of covert 19 leading the
nation's ruler kim jong-un to declare a
national lockdown
the country had so far claimed to have
had zero infections during the global
pandemic the exact number of cases or
the possible sources of infection are
not yet known north korea has so far
refused to accept international help
with vaccinations and has kept its
borders shut
joining us now from seoul is journalist
frank smith
frank analysts say this admission could
be a call for help how dangerous could
this outbreak be
well if we look at north korea's 26
million you have 26 million people that
are not vaccinated
take into consideration also the omicron
variant perhaps the most transmissible
covid19 variant so far
and north korea's dilapidated health
care system prior to the coven 19
pandemic and
for decades it's widely known that north
korea's health care is
critically underfunded understaffed
undersourced
those three things taken into
consideration together with the effect
of omicron and covet 19 in the most
developed countries with very robust
health care systems and in north korea
you have a situation where this could
spread across the country and have
devastating consequences for the north
korean population and the fact that uh
omicron can be fatal for the elderly the
more vulnerable who are unvaccinated
why are some people still moving around
then according to some accounts this
doesn't sound like a proper lockdown
well
yes that comes from an ap photographer
that was near the border looking over
the border and seeing an agricultural
area where people were working in the
fields so it appears that work at least
agricultural work in particular has not
been exempted we need to go back to
january 2020 when north korea was the
first country to lock down sealing its
border with china 90
of its critical it's only international
trade this had far reaching
economic consequences inside north korea
also as critical goods
health supplies medicines some foods
some household goods failed to get into
the country you had foreigners leave the
country ngos these sources of
information left the country so while
north korea prior to this
event had a very opaque sort of
information structure what we learned
about north korea was very difficult now
it's almost impossible to know what's
really going on inside north korea in
pyongyang for example other than what we
hear from the korea central news agency
at the same time kim jong-un in this
meeting of high-level officials
mentioned the need to continue economic
development despite the struggles the
country is having now ben and if north
korea does actually need help from
abroad is it going to take it when it
comes with conditions attached like
international surveillance
that's a very good question you have
analysts coming out on on both sides of
that today there is an admission of
failure is part of that and people think
that that means that north korea is
setting itself up to accept and perhaps
even request international aid all also
north korea has
reacted negatively within the country to
health care officials it's very unusual
for criticism of officials in north
korea to get out
however there is the potential for broad
assistance for countries other than
north korea's sort of arch rivals
south korea and the u.s there is the
potential for assistance from the
broader international community ben
frank smith in seoul thank you