North Korea was one of the first countries to act on reports of COVID-19 circulating in early 2020, sealing itself off from the outside world and its economic lifeline in China. There was no [informal] trade with China, not even to get some rice or a bag of wheat. If [authorities] heard of a soldier allowing that, that person would just disappear,” the trade said in the report. Peter Ward, a research fellow at the South Korea-based Sejong Institute who was not involved in the report, said that North Korea has yet to move on from COVID like other countries have. North Korea’s normalisation has been delayed a lot and arguably they haven’t really finished normalisation yet,” Ward told Al Jazeera.

Source: The North Africa Journal March 08, 2024 12:47 UTC