Experts say a major COVID-19 outbreak would be devastating in North Korea because of the poor health care system and could possibly trigger instability when combined with other problems like serious food shortages.
North Korea’s previous coronavirus-free claim had been disputed by many foreign experts. But South Korean officials have said North Korea had likely avoided a huge outbreak, in part because it instituted strict virus controls almost from the start of the pandemic.
North Korea had been one of the last places in the world without an acknowledged COVID-19 case after the virus first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019 spread to every continent including Antarctica. Turkmenistan, a similarly secretive and authoritarian nation in Central Asia, has reported no cases to the World Health Organization, though its claim also is widely doubted by outside experts.
FILE - A schoolgirl wearing face mask, disinfects her hands before entering the Kumsong Secondary School No. 2 in the morning in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Nov. 3, 2021. North Korea in January tentatively reopened railroad freight traffic between its border town of Sinuiju and China’s Dandong for the first time in two years, but China halted the trade last month due to an outbreak in Liaoning province, which borders North Korea.
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