Starting Oct. 1, North Korea began mandating that all people wear masks, Daily NK has learned.
North Korean authorities are calling it an “advisory,” but a source said that because the authorities are enforcing the advisory in everyday life, the measure amounts to a virtual mandate.
The source told Daily NK on Wednesday that the Ministry of Public Health issued an order on Sept. 26 to provincial people’s committees nationwide titled, “Fourth Quarter Instructions for Thorough Compliance with Quarantine Regulations Across All of Society.”
“The order includes an advisory for the entire society to wear masks from Oct. 1,” he said.
The source added that the authorities originally pushed to implement the virtual mask mandate from November, but instead did so from Oct. 1.
As North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — speaking before the Supreme People’s Assembly on Sept. 8 — had called on officials to advise all people to wear masks from November, the authorities were going to issue an order to that effect, but moved the advisory ahead by a month, said the source.
This suggests the authorities are implementing a realistic quarantine policy to deal with COVID-19 variants and seasonal flu outbreaks in North Korea.
In fact, the source said, “Many people in Pyongyang were quarantined at home as fever patients after the Sept. 9 event [to mark the anniversary of the founding of the North Korean government], and the Ministry of Public Health believes the disease spread faster because nobody wore masks during the event.”
While the Ministry of Public Health’s order “advises” mask wearing, the authorities perceive the advisory to be a mandate, and are reportedly telling people that masks are obligatory.
In Pyongyang, the authorities have ordered mask enforcement teams in each district to enforce mask wearing at marketplaces, subway entrances, underground passageways and bus stops through Oct. 10.
“People will probably get used to mandatory mask wearing during that time,” he said.
Even after declaring victory in its war against COVID-19 during a meeting to review national quarantine efforts in August, North Korea’s leadership has reportedly been advising residents of regions along the China-North Korea border and DMZ to wear masks.
With the move to mandate masks nationwide from Oct. 1, the country appears to be retreating once again from efforts to get back to normal.
Meanwhile, the source said the Ministry of Public Health told public health, healthcare and quarantine bodies at all levels that August’s meeting to review national quarantine efforts “did not declare quarantine efforts over, but reviewed the results, experiences and lessons of quarantine efforts so far and decided a new quarantine policy direction.”
The ministry complained that despite this, people already consider the pandemic over, resulting in poor compliance with regulations. “Going forward, complacency and carelessness in quarantine efforts will be forbidden,” it said.
The ministry is reportedly calling on public health, healthcare and quarantine officials to avoid slacking off “even for a moment” and to work on crafting quarantine and treatment plans for infectious diseases, noting that “about 100,000 patients nationwide still undergo a repeat cycle of treatment and recovery at national quarantine wards and at home.”
The source said within the Ministry of Public Health, the authorities stress that the mask advisory is a task officials will “have to permanently master in the fourth quarter” as “[North Korean]-style scientific quarantine efforts.”
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