North Korea has declared “victory” over Covid-19, three months after Kim Jong Un’s regime first admitted to an outbreak of the virus in the country.“The long-suffered quarantine war is finally over and today we are able solemnly to declare victory,” Kim told a gathering of thousands of scientists and health officials on Wednesday, in a speech reported by North Korean state media on Thursday.
Kim described South Korea’s official death toll of just 74 people as a “miracle” and praised the country’s “all-for-one and one-for-all collectivist spirit”. He thanked health officials for obeying the regime’s orders and “proving” that its policies had been correct.
Go Myong-hyun, a senior fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, said the “North Koreans don’t have the capacity to conduct mass testing for Covid, so their official figures are not credible at all”.