North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is unleashing a crackdown on a major city near the border with South Korea, where thousands of weeks have been spent in careers over coronavirus concerns.
Kim, during a key government party meeting on Thursday, stated that North Korea will keep its borders and reject any outside aid as the country launches an aggressive anti-coronavirus campaign and rebuilds thousands of houses, roads and bridges that have been damaged by heavy rain and floods in recent weeks.
The official Korean Central News Agency of Pyongyang also said that Kim replaced Kim Jae Ryong as prime minister, following an evaluation of the cabinet’s economic performance and appointed Kim Tok Hun as his successor.
During Thursday’s meeting, Kim said that after three weeks of isolation measures and “scientific verification”, it was clear that the virus situation in Kaesong was stable and expressed gratitude to residents for cooperating with the lockdown, KCNA reported.
Kim said his country now faces a double challenge in eliminating COVID-19 amid a devastating global pandemic and repairing damage caused by torrential rains that have devastated the country in recent weeks.
KCNA said 39,296 acres (97,100 acres) of crops nationwide were destroyed and 16,680 homes and 630 public buildings were destroyed or flooded.
It added many roads, bridges and railway sections were damaged and a dam from an unspecified power station gave way. No injuries or deaths were reported.
Kim expressed sympathy with people who were in temporary facilities after losing their homes to floods and called for speedy recovery efforts so that no one is “homeless” as the country celebrates the 75th anniversary of the founding Workers’ Party on October 10th.
“The situation, in which the spread of the global malignant virus has decreased, requires that we do not help outside the flood for the flood damage, but close the border close and carry out strict anti-epidemic work,” KCNA spokeswoman Kim said. .
Cho Hey-sil, spokesman for the Seoul Unity Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, said the South remains ready to provide humanitarian aid to the North.
South Korea’s ties are separated
North Korea has suspended virtually all cooperation with the South in recent months amid a deadlock in major nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang, which have erupted over disagreements over the exchange of sanctions relief and disarmament measures.
The North blew up an inter-Korean liaison bureau in Kaesong in June, after months of frustration over Seoul’s unwillingness to defy US-led sanctions over its nuclear weapons program and restart joint economic projects that address the broken economy. North would help.
In late July, Kim ordered a total lockdown of Kaesong and had shifted the nation into a “maximum emergency system” after the North reported finding a person with COVID-19 symptoms.
North state media said the suspect was a North Korean who had previously fled to the South before returning to Kaesong. However, South Korean health authorities say the 24-year-old did not have a positive test in South Korea and had never been in contact with a known virus carrier.
North Korea later said the person’s test results were unintentional and still maintains that it is coronavirus – free, a status that outsiders widely doubt.
In an email to the Associated Press news agency last week, Dr. Edwin Salvador, the World Health Organization’s representative to North Korea, said since the end of December, the country has quarantined and released 2,5905 people, 382 of them foreigners.
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