Pearls, rhino horns and arsenic: Covid-hit North Koreans advised to turn to traditional medicine
After years with an official tally of zero cases, Covid has come to North Korea. The country has reported 168 confirmed cases, while cases of reported fever are nearing 2 million.
Most of these “fever” cases, experts say, are very likely Covid-19, but with low test supplies, medics are unable to confirm. What is clear, though, is that North Korea, an entirely unvaccinated country with very little capacity to contain the virus, is on the brink of Covid disaster.
The healthcare system is highly outdated and ill-equipped, while medicines are difficult to access.
Worst of all, North Korea is one of only two countries in the world with absolutely no vaccines. Last year, Kim Jong-Un rejected millions of doses offered by the WHO’s COVAX initiative. North Korea would fight Covid “in our own style,” the leader said.
That meant guards were issued shoot-to-kill orders along the hermit country’s border with China, while state media warned people that everything from snow, to birds, to trash in the ocean could carry COVID. Citizens were ordered inside on numerous occasions, supposedly to shelter from “dust storms from China” that the government feared could carry the virus. As we reported, state media also warned people to be extra vigilant against propaganda leaflets floating over the border with South Korea, claiming they could be “a possible route of transmission of the malicious virus.”
“Because they shielded the country itself, now they don't have any supplies unless China secretly provided them,” said Dr. Sojin Lim, an Associate Professor in North Korean Studies at the University of Central Lancashire.
To Ethan Jewell, a Seoul-based correspondent for NK News, the rejection of COVAX jabs made little sense, as the party line generally promoted jabs as a viable way out of the pandemic. “State media described vaccines as effective against preventing serious illness or death,” he said. But none have materialized.
So, how does North Korea plan to recover from this crisis? The government has been reviewing its options, Dr. Lim told me. The reality is that the Chinese Zero-Covid model, which has offered a blueprint for North Korea’s epidemic prevention strategy, is not an option for the country, which relies on food imports and international aid, and wouldn’t be able to cope with resulting food shortages.