From March 2020 to May 2022, the country did not have a single case even though the world had more than 6 million deaths from the disease. At least that’s what the Kim Jong Un regime claimed, whose statistics international organizations have never been able to verify. However, since an alleged “patient zero” was announced about 20 days ago, cases of “mystery fever” have been recorded in more than 10% of North Korea’s 25 million people, and state communications assumed the pandemic had broken through almost insurmountable borders of the dictatorship. However, deaths would not exceed 70. TV Globo reporter Álvaro Pereira Júnior calculates: According to official figures, the mortality rate would be 0.002%, a performance 65 times better than that of neighboring South Korea, “role model in the fight against Covid”. Speaking to Renata Lo Prete, the journalist, who has covered North Korea for 15 years and was one of the few Brazilians to report in the country, discusses the reasons that would have led Kim Jongun to declare a health emergency and total lockdown, while at the same time she reject any kind of international aid, including from partner China. All this to later claim, in a new twist, that the outbreak has already been controlled. Although “no one can understand it well”, the most accepted hypotheses are “fear of sabotage” or “admit weakness”. Álvaro also comments on the risks for the population of the “real North Korea”, who live under the most precarious food and hygiene conditions. Still, he says, “there is not the slightest possibility that this pandemic will destabilize the regime.”
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Podcast The Subject is produced by: Mônica Mariotti, Isabel Seta, Tiago Aguiar, Lorena Lara, Gabriel de Campos, Luiz Felipe Silva, Thiago Kaczuroski, Gustavo Honório and Eto Osclighter. Presentation: Renata Lo Prete.