Just don’t expect me to take the lead anytime soon.
If you believe in the North Korean State Science and Technology Commission, clinical trials for the country’s national vaccine candidate are already underway, and now how to proceed with the third phase, which involves human testing, is being debated. .
To the outside world, the claim might seem dubious.
So why would a country that has not claimed a single Covid-19 case and is in dire straits economically spend time, money, and resources developing a vaccine?
There is no simple answer, but it is likely to be a combination of genuine fear of the virus, as well as an attempt to convince North Koreans that leader Kim Jong Un will once again rise to the challenge and protect his people.
North Korea was one of the first states to view Covid-19 as a serious threat, and with good reason: Most experts believe its health care system would quickly be overwhelmed by a pandemic. Many North Korean medical facilities do not have access to reliable electricity or running water. Medicine and other equipment are often in short supply.
Test ability also appears to be an issue. As of early July, only 922 people in a country of about 25 million had been tested for the virus, according to WHO representative in North Korea Dr. Edwin Salvador.
Salvador said in an email at the time that since the pandemic began, 25,551 people had been quarantined and then released. Up to 255 people, all of North Korean nationality, remained in quarantine until July 3.
Many independent public health experts are skeptical of North Korea’s claims of not having confirmed Covid-19 infections. The virus is highly infectious and could have easily infiltrated the country undetected.
That said, North Korea is in a good position to prevent groups from spreading, as it can quickly enact the kind of blockade measures that other states were slow to adopt. After all, it is a dictatorship that strictly controls who enters, generally only a small number of tourists, diplomats, and humanitarian workers, and where its citizens can and cannot go. Deserters say average North Koreans are not allowed to travel far from home without government approval.
It is unclear how important a domestically produced vaccine candidate is in North Korea’s anti-epidemic strategy. This is, after all, the so-called “Hermit Kingdom”, a country known for secrecy and obfuscation.
From a financial point of view, North Korea’s push for a vaccine is meaningless. Look at it through the prism of propaganda potential, though, and the picture becomes clearer.
For decades, North Korea was the technologically advanced industrialized half of the Korean peninsula, courtesy of the legacy of the Japanese occupation. Most of the natural resources the Japanese wanted were in the north, so they built factories there. South Korea was the breadbasket, and its economy was largely agrarian until after the Korean War.
Deserters say that North Korea’s appearance of technological supremacy today has been tarnished by foreign movies and TV shows smuggled into the country. However, reading North Korea’s state media gives the impression that the country has become a global technology powerhouse due to the leadership of the Kim family and its Juche state ideology, which is generally defined as “self-sufficiency”, but it also carries implications of an abstract, ethno-nationalistic belief in the superiority of the Korean race.
“Talents, science and technology are our strategic asset and key weapon,” read a short article published in June by state news agency KCNA.
These talents, KCNA said, “have evoked worldwide admiration.”
“It is thanks to the global horizons of our scientists and technicians and their self-esteem of living in a powerful country and deep knowledge that the power and prestige of Juche Korea are being demonstrated internationally,” the report read.
State media also tend to focus on fields where North Korea has failed to meet the demands of its people, especially electrical and food security.
KCNA reported on a new type of potato developed by North Korean scientists last week and raising 10 new, “tasty” and “high-yield” vegetables. In June, the news service published articles on the country’s “world leader” hydraulic dams; new advances in the breeding of rainbow trout; raise a new species of goldfish; new technological inventions at the Taedonggang brewery; and the production of a new ultraviolet lamp better than its imported equivalent.
Of course, producing a Covid-19 vaccine will probably be much, much more difficult than any of them. As of Monday afternoon, KCNA had not yet officially reported on North Korea’s vaccination efforts, with the only statement of the country’s ambitions coming from a government website.
However, the ability to do so would certainly be a good propaganda tool for a leader whose mandate is based on his informed supernatural ability to protect the Korean people.
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