A lecture reemphasizing emergency quarantine efforts was recently held in North Hamgyong Province, Daily NK has learned.
For several days, North Korea has been claiming there were no new “fever” cases, or even patients currently undergoing treatment for COVID-19, leading to speculation that the country could declare an end to the disease. Inside North Korea, however, the authorities continue to keep strict disease control measures in place.
According to a Daily NK source in North Hamgyong Province on Tuesday, the city of Chongjin recently held a lecture aimed at party members and workers titled, “Holding Fast to the Anti-Epidemic Wall by Strictly Keeping Emergency Anti-epidemic Measures.”
In the lecture materials, North Korea praised the country’s alleged success in lowering new COVID-19 cases to zero and in protecting national security, the lives of the people and public health — even as the virus spreads worldwide — as a “proud result” of the “entire people’s high-level of conscious conformity” that “moves as one” to the “party’s foresighted leadership and orders from the Central Committee.”
The lecture seems aimed at highlighting how the nation’s lockdown-heavy quarantine policy has borne fruit, justifying its measures, while soothing public opinion by easing a bit of the discontent that resulted from the measuress
The lecture materials stated: “We must hold dear the quarantine success we’ve already achieved, and ensure in all possible ways the security of the nation and the welfare of the people by constantly solidifying those successes.”
The materials called on people to show maximum awareness and vigilance as emergency quarantine efforts grow protracted, and for them to embrace emergency quarantine efforts as their own as they double check those efforts.
In particular, the materials reminded listeners that Paragraph 4 of Article 55 of the nation’s emergency quarantine law requires all North Koreans and foreigners in North Korea to wear a mask at all times and keep a set distance from one another.
They also called on staff and workers in all sectors and workplaces to understand these demands and avoid violations.
The lecture condemned how some workplaces and people were going slack on quarantine efforts in a “self-absorbed way,” calling for “intensified party, administrative and legal struggles” to combat this “phenomenon.”
Early on, everyone wore masks on their own even when nobody asked them to; recently, however, people have been going maskless even in broad daylight, the materials claimed.
In fact, the lecturer who gave the talk implored listeners to comply with quarantine regulations, warning that the failure of some people to follow regulations “just because there have been no new fever cases recently” could “harm once again the safety of the nation and the well-being of the people.”
However, the party members and workers who actually attended the lecture responded coldly to what they heard, saying they were “sick of the emergency quarantine measures” and that “they couldn’t understand whether they’re going to intensify emergency quarantine efforts or lift them.”
The source said while the government said in the lecture that the recent success of emergency quarantine efforts was thanks to party members and workers, “it was a trick to justify excessive controls on the people in the name of emergency quarantine efforts.”
Meanwhile, Rodong Sinmun reported on Aug. 5 that, “As no new fever cases were reported during the past week and all those receiving treatment have recovered across the country, the overall anti-epidemic situation of the DPRK has entered a definite phase of stability.”
