A damning new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies reveals the true cost of North Korea’s pandemic deception—a systematic cover-up that likely condemned thousands of its own citizens to preventable deaths.
Based on interviews with 100 North Koreans, the study paints a devastating picture of a government that chose propaganda over public health. While Pyongyang didn’t officially acknowledge a single COVID case until May 2022, the virus had been ravaging the isolated nation since 2020, spreading unchecked through a population left defenseless by their own leadership.
The testimonies are haunting in their simplicity. One interviewee described hospitals so overwhelmed they classified anyone with fever and cold symptoms as a COVID suspect—not because of sophisticated testing, but because they had no testing capabilities at all. An education worker recounted nursing homes running out of coffins as death tolls mounted. Of the 100 people interviewed, 92 reported that they or someone they knew had contracted the virus.
This wasn’t mere bureaucratic incompetence; it was willful negligence. The report concludes that if North Korea had told the truth early and accepted international assistance, countless lives could have been saved. Instead, the regime chose to maintain its facade of pandemic-free perfection while its people suffered without vaccines, protective equipment, or even basic medical acknowledgment of their illness.
The findings illuminate a cruel irony: a government that claims to put its people first abandoned them when they needed protection most. Citizens were left to fend for themselves against a virus their government pretended didn’t exist, turning what should have been a public health response into a test of individual survival.
