Nordkorea

[Schneemann]

Ich teile die Einschätzung im Artikel nicht, egal wie stark oder schwach das Virus in Nordkorea noch wirken wird, so sitzt das Kim-Regime viel zu fest im Sattel, als dass diese Seuche das System an sich erschüttern könnte, selbst wenn im schlimmsten Fall Millionen von Menschen sterben sollten. In den 1990ern erschütterte eine Hungerkrise mit vermutlich Millionen Opfern das Land, und im Ergebnis war die Regierung danach sogar gefestigter und das Land noch abgeschotteter.

North Korea is facing a Covid disaster. What does that mean for Kim Jong Un?

(CNN) - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un looks like he's in big trouble. His country has announced an "explosive" outbreak of Covid-19, reporting more than 2 million cases of what it refers to as "fever" in little more than a week since its first reported case. In a largely undeveloped and famously isolated country of 25 million, where the vast majority of people are thought to be unvaccinated, it has the potential to be a humanitarian disaster on the sort of scale that would threaten the grip on power of just about any government in the world. [...]

Kim has at his disposal an extensive propaganda machine and an ability to block outside information that could help him shape the narrative of this crisis in his favor -- much as his predecessors did with the 1990s famine thought to have starved hundreds of thousands of North Koreans to death. Back then, Pyongyang had framed its problems as an "Arduous March" -- and blamed them partly on flooding and partly on American sanctions. Kim is already showing signs of trying to stage manage this latest crisis. Even before the outbreak was announced, Kim had been warning his officials to prepare for "another, more difficult Arduous March." That appeared to be a reference to severe food shortages that are once again facing the country and have likely been made worse by the very border lockdowns Kim introduced to keep the virus out. [...]

"The fact that Kim Jong Un has decided to come out and publicly announce this health crisis is quite telling," said Lina Yoon, a senior Korea researcher at Human Rights Watch. "(It) may have a political element, obviously." [...] In response, Kim has appeared unusually willing to admit the problems facing his country, declaring the "gravest state of emergency" and ordering all provinces and cities into lockdown. [...]

"If senior elites start dying en masse -- there are quite a lot of them, and we don't know if they are vaccinated -- if many of them die of it, there may be questions asked about why North Korea didn't vaccinate earlier," said Chad O'Carroll, managing director of the Seoul-based NK News outlet. [...] "It is going to test his leadership, and it is going to create some urgency for very creative storytelling in the North Korean propaganda apparatus," said O'Carroll of NK News. [...] "North Korean citizens have definitely been through a lot," he said. "The first thing he could do is really apologize and take some blame for it."

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/20/asia/...index.html

Schneemann