North Korea boasts that it has no cases of COVID-19, even as its neighbor to the north China has experienced more than 3,200 deaths from the global pandemic.
North Korean leader Kim Jung Un claims that a 30-day quarantine, a closed border and the suspension of trade with China has kept the nation free from coronavirus.
But some experts think the claim is just a cover-up.
‘It’s impossible for North Korea not to have a single case of coronavirus,’ Jung H. Pak, a former CIA expert on North Korea, said to Fox News. Pak said the unrealistic brag from Un is likely his way of drawing attention away from North Korea’s economy, human rights violations and other criminal acts.
Officials in North Korea said they found no coronavirus infections among the more than 5,400 people who were released from quarantine.
General Robert Abrams, a commander of U.S. Forces Korea, points to the low level of recent military activity in North Korea as one hint that coronavirus likely infected the country.
‘It is a closed-off nation, so we can’t say emphatically that they have cases, but we’re fairly certain they do,’ Abrams said.
He added, ‘What I do know is that their armed forces had been fundamentally in a lockdown for about 30 days and only recently have they started routine training again. As one example, they didn’t fly an airplane for 24 days.’