Kim Jong-un’s notorious sister is back in the limelight. Not only is Kim Yo Jong reiterating her hostile words against South Korea and the United States, but she is also seeking to reinforce the loyalty of the North Korean people to her brother. How better to combine the two than to infer that the Supreme Leader had, in fact, caught coronavirus.
When North Korea first disclosed cases of a ‘fever’ in May this year, the world waited to see how the country’s rudimentary healthcare system and largely unvaccinated population would cope. Nearly three months after that revelation, Kim Jong-un has ‘declared victory’ over coronavirus. Although the regime still refers to coronavirus euphemistically as a ‘fever’, the leader’s announcement at a national meeting is, to date, the closest admission that coronavirus had penetrated the North’s borders. At that same meeting, however, it was Kim Yo Jong who took centre stage, as she revealed that not even her brother – whose lengthy public absences over the past two years have attracted much speculation – could escape the virus.
Such vitriol comes as South Korea and the US prepare to conduct their first large-scale joint military drills in four years
The North Korean leader announced that the virus had been ‘eradicated’ owing to the ‘efficiency of the party’ and ‘superiority of the Korean-style socialist system’. Lauding his Workers’ party served as a clarion call that the North Korean people should continue to obey the party’s directives. Yet this is a regime for whom deception, deceit, and dishonesty is the norm. Even as it admitted an ‘explosion’ of fever cases earlier this year, the North’s statistics were dubious. That covid has now suddenly disappeared from the North’s borders is equally questionable, given the North’s meagre testing capabilities and lack of systemic vaccine distribution, despite being aided by the supply of vaccines and masks from China.
Just how Kim Jong-un was afflicted by coronavirus remains unknown, but speaking to a crying and cheering audience, Kim Yo Jong announced how the leader had become seriously ill, having caught the virus whilst toiling for his people. It is a prime example of how the regime is using coronavirus to bolster nationalism and tighten domestic ideological control. Kim Jong-un wants to be seen as a man of the people who, through working for his people, succumbed to adversity of his own. It is not just the North Korean people who have suffered under hardship, so the North Korean narrative goes, so too has the Supreme Leader.
Although it has been overtaken by China in this vein, North Korea remains a battleground against coronavirus. The measures taken to combat the virus – from lockdowns to border controls – have offered the regime a convenient excuse to chastise its adversaries for its own problems. Who better to do so than Kim Yo Jong. Two years earlier, she had infamously denounced South Korean activist groups as ‘human scum’ for sending anti-DPRK leaflets across the inter-Korean border. The regime practised what it preached by blowing up the inter-Korean liaison office, a de facto embassy. Now, South Korea is being blamed yet again for a similar crime.
In a case of déjà vu, she once more revived her vituperative rhetoric. In an expletive-ridden invective, Kim Yo Jong, who has risen through the ranks within North Korea’s ruling elites, warned of ‘deadly retaliation’ if South Korea continues ‘dangerous shit that could introduce the virus into our country’. Referring to balloons containing anti-DPRK messages sent by South Korean activist groups across the South-North border, she derided such material as ‘dirty enemy items’ and accused the South of trying to ‘take advantage of the world health crisis and crush our country’. Ironically, these obscenities highlighted how it is North Korea that has taken, and will continue to take, advantage of coronavirus to blame its adversaries, not least South Korea, for introducing the virus to the DPRK.
It is no coincidence that such vitriol comes when South Korea and the United States are due to conduct their first large-scale joint military drills in four years later this month. In response to pledges by the conservative South Korean President, Yoon Suk-yeol to strengthen Seoul’s alliance with Washington, Kim Jong-un threatened to ‘wipe out’ Yoon and the South Korean military if provocations ensued. What is more, China seems to be inching closer to its north-eastern nuclear neighbour. Recent relations between Beijing and Seoul have soured following South Korea’s plans to expand its Terminal High Altitude Aerial Defence missile defence system, which China fears could undermine its security by tracking its own military movements.
As instability continues in East Asia with China’s ongoing militarisation in the Taiwan Straits, North Korea’s heated rhetoric points towards another rocky road in the region. Despite declaring victory over coronavirus, Kim Jong-un warned that another crisis could ensue. This crisis could be of North Korea’s making. Only the regime can decide when to conduct its seventh nuclear test, but Pyongyang is trying to ensure the conditions will be in its favour. Even if North Korea’s ‘quarantine war’ against coronavirus may have ended, Pyongyang’s battle with Seoul and Washington is only just beginning.
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