North Korea’s Kim slams officials over ‘great crisis’ in virus fight

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has said an unspecified “crucial” incident in the country’s fight against the deadly coronavirus triggered a “great crisis” that endangered the isolated nation, state media reported Wednesday.

Kim, who was presiding over a meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea politburo a day earlier, scolded senior officials for failing to carry out strict anti-virus measures, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said.

Officials had been derelict in their duties, triggering the incident and “creating a great crisis in ensuring the security of the state and safety of the people,” which “entailed grave consequences,” KCNA quoted Kim as saying.

The isolated North has maintained it has not recorded a single case of COVID-19 in the country, though outside experts have been skeptical of this claim.

Observers say Kim likely views the coronavirus as an existential threat to the stability of the sanctions-hit regime, with the North being one of the first countries in the world to seal its borders amid the pandemic.

The pandemic is also likely to put a damper on attempts to restart denuclearization talks with the United States, the two sides having been at loggerheads since late 2019.

Earlier this month, the North Korean leader used a meeting with senior officials to discuss the need to maintain a “perfect anti-epidemic state,” an indication that his country’s tough lockdown measures are unlikely to end anytime soon.

Kim said the harsh measures were necessary since “the world health crisis is becoming worse and worse due to the malignant virus,” a likely reference to the spread of more virulent COVID-19 variants.

The shuttering of the border has cut off key imports and aid — particularly from China, its sole patron — exacerbating an already difficult situation in the North.

In a rare admission this month, Kim himself formally acknowledged that the county is facing dire food shortages, rekindling images of a mass famine in the 1990s.

The North was scheduled to receive 1.7 million doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine by the end of May through the World Health Organization-backed COVAX initiative, but shipments were halted after Pyongyang was unwilling to follow COVAX rules, including monitoring by the program, Kyodo News reported last month.

In a possible bid to offset this, the country is reportedly scrambling to secure large amounts of COVID-19 vaccines for its military via its officials living abroad, according to Daily NK, a Seoul-based online publication that monitors the North.

This has lent credence to the widespread belief among observers that the coronavirus situation there is far worse than the country has let on, and that — at least for now — attempts to kick-start denuclearization talks with the U.S. are likely to be met with indifference as the regime pours all of its energy into fighting the deadly virus.