North Korea News: Did Kim Jong Un Know About COVID-19 Before Telling Rest Of Country?

North Korea leader Kim Jong Un knew the virus was in the country in July but didn’t release any information about it until the first case was suspected.

During confidential discussions in July, Kim admitted there were COVID-19 cases in his country, Asia Press reported Friday. This was during an “emergency Politburo meeting” on July 25.

The reason for concern is because the dates on the documents show that Kim and his team knew that COVID-19 was present before the first report of a suspected case.

In efforts to keep the virus out of the country, Kim shut down North Korea’s borders to China. Kim talked about all the “strong emergency quarantine measures” but the documents said otherwise.

He admitted that the efforts of closing down the borders and enforcing quarantine measures didn’t keep the virus out.

"In spite of strong emergency quarantine measures that were taken nationwide, [Kim] said he could not stop the novel coronavirus entering North Korean precincts," the report said, citing the "7-page" North Korean document.

Reports since March have claimed that North Korea is ill-equipped to contain the pandemic.

On Nov. 13, U.S.-based tech giant Microsoft confirmed that state-backed hackers from North Korea, as well as Russia, targeted organizations that were developing a coronavirus vaccine.

“The targets include leading pharmaceutical companies and vaccine researchers in Canada, France, India, South Korea, and the United States,” Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of customer security and trust, wrote in a blog post.