A huge number of North Koreans, including leader Kim Jong-un, attended a funeral for a top official, state media reported yesterday, as the country maintained the much-disputed claim that its suspected coronavirus outbreak is subsiding.
Since admitting earlier this month to an outbreak of the highly contagious Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, North Korea has only stated how many people have fevers daily and identified just a fraction of the cases as COVID-19.
Its state media yesterday said that 2.8 million people have fallen ill due to an unidentified fever, but only 68 of them died since late last month, an extremely low fatality rate if the illness is COVID-19 as suspected.
Photo: Reuters
North Korea has limited testing capability for that many sick people, but some experts say it is also likely underreporting mortalities to protect Kim from political damage.
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim on Sunday attended the funeral of Hyon Chol-hae, a Korean People’s Army marshal who played a key role in grooming him as the country’s next leader before Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il, died in late 2011.
In what was one of the country’s biggest state funerals since his father’s death, a bare-faced Kim Jong-un carried Hyon’s coffin with other top officials who wore masks before he threw earth to his grave with his hands at the national cemetery.
Kim Jong-un and hundreds of masked soldiers and officials also deeply bowed before Hyon’s grave, state TV footage showed.
State TV earlier showed thousands of other masked soldiers clad in olive-green uniforms gathered at a Pyongyang plaza taking off their hats and paying a silent tribute before a funeral limousine carrying Hyon’s body left for the cemetery.
The KCNA said “a great many” soldiers and citizens also turned out along streets to express their condolences.
Kim Jong-un often arranges big funerals for late senior officials loyal to his ruling family and shows a human side in a possible bid to draw the support of the country’s ruling elite and boost internal unity.
The KCNA quoted Kim Jong-un as saying that “the name of Hyon Chol-hae would be always remembered along with the august name of Kim Jong-il.”
He wept when he visited a mourning station established for Hyon last week.
During Sunday’s funeral, most people, except for Kim Jong-un and honor guards, wore masks. The North’s ongoing outbreak was likely caused by the April 25 military parade and related events that drew large crowds of people who wore no masks.
North Korea maintains a nationwide lockdown and other stringent rules to curb the virus outbreak. Region-to-region movement is banned, but key agricultural, economic and other industrial activities were continuing in an apparent effort to minimize harm to the country’s already moribund economy.
The KCNA yesterday said that 167,650 new fever cases had been detected in the past 24-hour period, a notable drop from the peak of about 390,000 reported about one week ago.
It said one more person died and that the fever’s fatality rate was 0.002 percent.
“All the people of [North Korea] maintain the current favorable turn in the anti-epidemic campaign with maximum awareness, in response to the call of the party central committee for defending their precious life and future with confidence in sure victory and redoubled great efforts,” the KCNA said.
Experts question the North’s tally, given North Korea’s 26 million people are mostly unvaccinated and about 40 percent are reportedly undernourished. The public healthcare system is almost broken and chronically short of medicine and supplies.
In South Korea, where most of its 52 million people are fully vaccinated, the fatality rate of COVID-19 was 0.13 percent as of yesterday.
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