North Korea kicked off a rare political event that would take place every five years, with about 5,000 people – including leader Kim Jong Un – gathering inside without masks on Tuesday and sitting close together.
While it is impossible to verify whether facial covers were worn at any point in time, none of the images have been released by North Korea’s state-run KCNA. of the Congress of the Workers’ Party show people wearing masks indoors.
From a propaganda standpoint, the images make sense: North Korea does not claim to have registered a single case of Covid-19, so holding a high-level meeting without masks is one way to reinforce that story.
But hardly anyone believes that North Korea was spared a pandemic that infected more than 86 million people and killed nearly 2 million. Kim’s regime even recognizes the danger of the virus and has gone to great lengths to stop its spread.
Virtually all trips to the country stopped shortly after the virus surfaced a year ago, and internal travel has also been severely limited. Articles regularly appearing in North Korean state media remind the population of the importance of their anti-epidemic campaign. And the regime had reportedly had two people executed for not following Covid-19 guidelines, including a customs officer who did not follow virus prevention rules when importing goods from China.
Experts believe Pyongyang is responding vigilantly because it knows that its dilapidated healthcare infrastructure is unlikely to contain a major outbreak of Covid-19.
That makes the photos of Tuesday’s meeting all the more puzzling. Perhaps North Korea believes that the precautions it took were good enough to allow those in attendance not to wear masks at the meeting. This is a unique event that North Korea does not want to postpone – it is only the eighth party convention in North Korea’s history and the second of Kim’s tenure. The last occurred before Kim came to power, in 1980.
But holding on is a risk. If only one of the 5,000 people who traveled from across the country to attend the rally had Covid-19 and was contagious, it means that Kim may have just kicked off an incredibly important political rally with a super spreader event.