The lockdown was declared Friday afternoon. Some observers said authorities likely tried to determine who has been missing since last week among North Korean refugees in South Korea, especially among those originally from Kaesong.“Blaming an alleged return defector for bringing COVID-19 into the country is likely intended to shift blame for spread of the virus away from China and Pyongyang and on to Seoul,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.“This may also be a tactic for ratcheting up diplomatic pressure on (South Korea) and trying to further dissuade North Koreans from defecting to the South,” he said. People who had been in contact with the suspected patient and those who had been to Kaesong in the last five days were also quarantined.Describing its anti-virus efforts as a “matter of national existence,” North Korea earlier this year shut down nearly all cross-border traffic, banned foreign tourists and mobilized health workers to quarantine anyone with symptoms. We apologize for any inconvenience. In late July, Kim ordered a total lockdown of Kaesong and had the nation shift into a “maximum emergency system” after the North reported it found a person with COVID-19 symptoms. The incident occurred around the same time as a more widely publicized returning refugee incident on July 19, when a man who had escaped to South Korea in 2017 swam back to the North across the inter-Korean border in the vicinity of his hometown Kaesong. Cheong, however, said it was unlikely that the North’s claim of the person crossing the border was false because it couldn’t punish its own military unit with a fabricated announcement.
Kaesong, a city with an estimated population of 200,000, is located just north of the heavily fortified land border with South Korea. It once hosted the Koreas’ jointly run industrial complex, which has been shut since 2016 amid nuclear tensions. They are also skeptical about North Korea’s claim of having had no infections because the country shares a long, porous border with China, its biggest trading partner, where the world’s first known virus cases were reported in December.Kaesong, a city with an estimated population of 200,000, is located just north of the heavily fortified land border with South Korea. But he said virus fears would engulf North Korean leaders.“The anxiety and fears about COVID-19 spreading in the North Korean leadership would be much bigger than outsiders can roughly speculate because the country lacks test kits and has virtually no facilities to treat virus patients,” Cheong said. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: "KCNA" which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency.

But the Kaesong lockdown is the first such known measure taken in a North Korean city to stem the pandemic.Foreign experts say a coronavirus outbreak in North Korea could cause dire consequences because of its fragile public health care infrastructure and chronic lack of medical supplies. It once hosted the Koreas’ jointly run industrial complex, which has been shut since 2016 amid nuclear tensions.
He said North Korea was unlikely to resume dialogue and exchanges with South Korea until it is confident about containing a possible virus outbreak.In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends an emergency Politburo meeting in Pyongyang, North Korea Saturday, July 25, 2020. It said the person was placed under quarantine. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends an emergency Politburo meeting in Pyongyang, North Korea Saturday, July 25, 2020.

Last month, North Korea blew up an inter-Korean liaison office in Kaesong to protest a campaign by South Korean activists who have been sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border.


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