North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called an emergency meeting of the politburo after a person suspected of Covid-19 returning from South Korea after illegally crossing the border this month, state media said on Sunday.
If confirmed, it would be the first case officially recognized by North Korean authorities, who have so far said that the country has no confirmed cases of coronavirus.
Kim declared a state of emergency and imposed a blockade on the border city of Kaesong, calling it a “critical situation in which it could be said that the vicious virus entered the country,” the state news agency KCNA reported.
According to KCNA, a person who defected to South Korea three years ago returned through the fortified border dividing the two Koreas with symptoms that suggested Covid-19.
“An emergency event occurred in Kaesong City, where a fugitive who went south three years ago, a person suspected of having been infected with the vicious virus returned on July 19 after illegally crossing the demarcation line,” KCNA said.
KCNA did not specifically mention whether the individual had been examined, but said “an uncertain result was obtained from various medical checks of the organ secretion and blood from that person’s upper respiratory tract,” leading officials to quarantine and investigate anyone who may have been in contact with
North Korea received thousands of coronavirus test kits from Russia and other countries, and imposed strict border closures. Thousands of people in the secret nation were quarantined, but the restrictions had recently eased.
In recent weeks, North Korea has also stepped up a campaign criticizing South Korean defectors as “human scum” and calling on South Korea to crack down on groups sending propaganda messages and food aid to the North.
Kim ordered an investigation into the military units along the border where the person was suspected to have crossed to “administer severe punishment and take necessary measures.”
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