COVID-19 in North Korea
7 April 2021
Rather than creating chaos in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the COVID-19 pandemic has been turned into an opportunity for the Kim dynasty to further tighten its grip on power, Leonid Petrov writes.
On 23 January 2020, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) became the first country in the world to shut its borders in response to COVID-19. A week before the World Health Organization proclaimed the outbreak of the coronavirus a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, North Korea’s third-generation Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-Un, apparently realised the danger a foreign virus could pose to the people and his power.