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North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un on Thursday declared “victory” over the coronavirus, despite his sister announcing that the North Korean leader was suffering from “a high fever” amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kim blamed South Korea for the outbreak and vowed to get revenge on her neighbor. His sister Kim Yo Jong did not directly confirm that her brother had the virus but said he was “seriously ill” and had a “high fever”.
“Even though he was seriously ill with a high fever, faced with the anti-epidemic war, he could not lie down for a moment and think about the people he had to take care of until the end,” she said on North Korean television.
North Korea has never provided data on how many of its citizens have been infected with COVID. It has instead relied on the daily number of fever patients, which peaked at 47.7 million, according to Portal.
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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends a meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea in Pyongyang. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP, File)
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his sister Kim Yo Jong watch a military parade in Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Square. (AP)
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Yo Jong cited South Korean leaflets and propaganda found near the border as the cause of the outbreak.
“We can no longer ignore the steady influx of garbage from South Korea,” she said. “Our countermeasure must be deadly vengeance.”
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But experts have pushed back reports of Pyongyang’s victory over COVID, with cases abruptly ending on July 28. Official government statistics say COVID had a fatality rate of just 0.0016%, or 74 out of about 4.77 million in the country, according to Portal.