N Korea’s zero-virus claim questioned
Through the SARS outbreak and flu pandemic, Choi Jung Hun, a doctor in North Korea, didn't have significantly more than a thermometer to choose who should be quarantined.
Barely paid, with no test kits and dealing with antiquated equipment, if anything, he and his fellow doctors in the northeastern city of Chongjin were often unable to determine who had the condition, even after patients died, said Choi, who fled to South Korea in 2012.
Local health officials weren't asked to verify cases or submit them to the central government in Pyongyang, Choi said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Experts say North Korea's reluctance to admit major outbreaks of disease, its wrecked medical infrastructure and its own extreme sensitivity to any potential threat to Kim Jong Un's authoritarian rule ensures that Pyongyang is likely handling the current coronavirus pandemic very much the same.
This has resulted in widespread skepticism over the nation's claim to have zero infections.
"It's a lie," Choi, 45, said. "Every year, and atlanta divorce attorneys season, varied infectious diseases repeatedly occur but North Korea says there's no outbreak."
Outsiders strongly suspect that coronavirus, which has sickened more than 2.3 million persons worldwide, has recently spread to North Korea since it shares an extended, porous border with China, its most significant trading partner and biggest aid benefactor. China is where the first known coronavirus cases were reported in December.
North Korea, which includes quarantined tens of thousands and delayed the school year as precautionary steps, officially sealed its border with China in January, but smuggling across the frontier still likely happens. Activist groups in Seoul said they've been told by contacts in North Korea that persons had died of the virus. Those claims can't be independently verified.
While there were no reliable outside reports of mass infections in North Korea yet, the country's tight control on information allows few foreign experts to say with an authority that the North's quarantine regime has been successful. As observed in Singapore, the coronavirus can surge again, and North Korea's powerful Politburo said the other day it could further bolster anti-epidemic steps.
"I think a significant number of folks could die. But that wont be disclosed to the outside world for the reason that North isn't even in a position to diagnose patients with (the coronavirus)," said Kim Sin-gon, a professor at Korea University College of Medicine in Seoul. He said North Korea is struggling to take care of seriously ill patients, and noted U.N. reports that about 40% of its 24 million persons are undernourished.
Russia's foreign ministry said in February it donated 1,500 coronavirus test kits to North Korea, and observers say similar kits have also been shipped there from China. Some relief agencies, including UNICEF and Doctors Without Borders, said they sent gloves, masks, goggles and hand hygiene products to North Korea.
North Korea's main newspaper recently called its public health system "the most superior on the globe" and said that Kim Jong Un's devotion to bettering it is the reason there are no infections.
North Korea's socialist free medical service collapsed in the mid-1990s amid economic chaos and a famine that killed an estimated hundreds of thousands. Recently, Kim Jong Un has generated new hospitals and modernized some medical facilities as the economy improved, but almost all of the medical benefits still largely head to his ruling elite, authorities say.
Dozens of refugees interviewed in a recently available study said they felt the North's health care system has become poorer under Kim Jong Un, according to Min Ha-ju, a North Korean refugee-turned-researcher. She said the gap between your haves and the havenots in terms of medical service is deepening just because a crumbled state rationing system has resulted in a burgeoning private economy.
Choi, the physician who worked in North Korea, said his monthly income was the same as about 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of rice and that he received cigarettes from patients in substitution for telling them what medicine they can purchase at markets.
Cho Chung-hui, a former local North Korean official who is now with the Seoul-based NGO Good Farmers, said he gave cash to doctors to cure gastritis and enteritis.
Choi and Cho said measles, chickenpox, cholera, typhoid, paratyphoid, hepatitis and tuberculosis repeatedly swept through North Korea if they were there. Choi said he wore no masks, gloves or protective gear during outbreaks and used equipment made in the 1960-70s.
Through the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak, Choi said hundreds of folks in Chongjin died after suffering flu-like symptoms during eight months of intense quarantine.
"But no (doctors) can dare to diagnose the dead with SARS. There wasn't an order to verify the reason for their deaths, and we didn't have diagnostic kits," said Choi, now a researcher at a Korea University-affiliated institute.
Throughout a 2009 flu pandemic, Choi said he didn't have diagnostic kits and asked patients with fevers what antibiotics they had used before positioning some under quarantine. After many patients died, he speculated their deaths were likely from the flu.
In an extremely unusual admission of a disease outbreak apparently targeted at winning outside aid, North Korea's state media said in December 2009 that nine persons in Pyongyang and the northwestern border town of Sinuiju had contracted the flu.
Some say North Korea might not exactly have big clusters of infections since it doesn't have densely populated cities and strictly restricts freedom of movement and association. But many others disagree, saying all North Koreans must attend various state-organized group activities and a lack of sufficient sanitation could worsen outbreaks. Additionally, there are questions about the workings of North Korea's quarantine campaign.
The North's medical system is similar to a "a broken rusty pistol which doesn't even have a bullet since it hasn't been maintained for a long time," Choi said.
