Has Kim Jong Un Fled North Korea's Capital To Escape The Coronavirus?

North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un has left Pyongyang for a coastal location to escape the coronavirus, according to an unnamed source inside the secretive state and reported by Chosun Ilbo, a South Korean newspaper. At the same time, North Korean state media said the leader has supervised another round of artillery exercises aimed at boosting the country’s fighting capability.

The military news might be just a distraction from a much larger problem with the novel coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19.

Little is known about what truly goes on inside North Korea, so it is better to start with some basic known facts and then elaborate on the most likely scenario north of the 38th parallel:

• South Korea has seen one of the world's most significant outbreaks of the virus, with 66 reported deaths amid 7,800 infections. Pyongyang continues to deny COVID-19 has any presence within its borders as if the 38th parallel holds some magic power to prevent the virus from crossing it.
• The virus originated in the city of Wuhan in China’s Hubei province sometime in mid-December and quickly spread to other cities. It was some weeks before any measures were taken to contain the virus and thus an unknown number of infected people would have crossed the border into North Korea and possibly into Pyongyang about 130 miles south of the border.
• The SARS-COV-19 has proven to be very contagious as evidenced by the global outbreaks in Italy, Iran, and South Korea.
• North Korea’s health care system is probably not prepared to deal with a major health crisis. The United Nations special rapporteur (an independent expert) for human rights says that the country’s problems with malnutrition need the attention of medical and humanitarian specialists.
• COVID-19 is harsh on people with “underlying medical conditions” so if malnutrition is considered an underlying condition, then ill-fed people are at high risk.
• North Korea will be hard-pressed to obtain modern medical technologies to test and treat the virus due to many reasons including international sanctions already in place over their nuclear programs, a lack of money to invest and a lack of internal medical talent trained to treat viral outbreaks.

A single issue might be easily dismissed but when all six of the above points are in play then the problem is surely much worse than what the North Korean leader chooses to share.

That unnamed source had more to say, “There's just too many bodies (piling up), the military leadership likely believes that suddenly asking the hospitals to cremate all the bodies would create a big headache for medical staff.”

It would be welcome news if Kim Jong Un could cure the virus by some miracle, but it is more likely that he will hold the army chiefs responsible for the deaths that have occurred in their units and send them to the country’s infamous prison camps. After that, he might oversee another military exercise.