North Korea: Kim Jong-un’s Sister Says He Suffered ‘High and Scary’ Coronavirus Fever

Senior North Korean official Kim Yo-jong, communist leader Kim Jong-un’s sister, said in her first known televised speech on Thursday that the dictator had endured a “high and scary” fever during the nation’s declared Chinese coronavirus epidemic.

Kim and his sister both issued public remarks on Wednesday declaring the internal Chinese coronavirus outbreak over. North Korea claimed for over two years not to have documented a single Chinese coronavirus case within its border – a claim many international public health experts questioned – before announcing its first confirmed case in May. Pyongyang then documented over a million coronavirus cases in one month after not having documented a single one prior to the current outbreak.

Speaking to the public on national television, Kim Yo-jong announced that the communists had allegedly vanquished the disease. While North Korea shares a porous border with China – where illicit, sanctions-defying commerce thrives – Kim claimed that the virus entered the country through the heavily armed border with South Korea. Kim blamed humanitarian groups for sending leaflets with anti-communist propaganda and balloons with humanitarian aid into the country, failing to explain how they could have infected people when scientists largely agree that touching contaminated surfaces is not a primary infection route for Chinese coronavirus.

Kim spent the first half of the speech praising her brother, crediting him with having personally managed every aspect of pandemic response in the country despite having no medical or public health background.

“During the days of the extremely stern anti-epidemic campaign, the respected Comrade Kim Jong-un convened a series of meetings of the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee to protect the lives of our dear people,” Kim Yo-jong claimed, “in which he personally came up with packages of various measures and ways, and visited anti-epidemic theatres day and night to teach clear-cut methods.”

Kim claimed her brother “scrutinized more than 1,772 documents of 22,956 pages to guide the anti-epidemic campaign of the country,” according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) report on her speech. KCNA is the official news agency of the communist North Korean regime.

KCNA omitted from its English-language report on her speech that she mentioned that Kim Jong-un had apparently suffered from fevers during the pandemic, which she did not specify was the product of a Chinese coronavirus infection but appeared to imply that it was. NBC News, apparently translating the Korean-language version of the report, relayed her admission.

“He must be responsible to the end of the world and so cannot stay in bed even when he was suffering from the high and scary fever,” Kim Yo-jong reportedly said.
The Associated Press similarly reported that Kim Yo-jong “said he [Kim Jong-un] suffered a fever while guiding the country to victory over the coronavirus.”

Kim Jong-un also reportedly made public appearances on Wednesday to celebrate the alleged end of the epidemic, but did not mention any personal struggle with coronavirus according to state media. The dictator did not offer a speech as sweeping as his sister’s, instead holding a “photo session with the participants in the national meeting for reviewing the emergency anti-epidemic work.”

“When the General Secretary arrived at the venue of the photo session, all the participants raised thunderous cheers of ‘Hurrah!'” state media outlets specified.

The second half of Kim Yo-jong’s speech, according to the KCNA report, was spent mostly threatening vengeance upon South Korea for supposedly causing North Korea’s coronavirus crisis. Kim blamed “the despicable ones in South Korea” for sending “strange objects” and “rubbish” into the country that infected North Koreans with the disease.

“It is an undeniable fact that a single person or a single object infected with the highly contagious virus may infect many other people in a moment and cause a grave health crisis,” Kim Yo-jong insisted.

“From this scientific view, we come to draw a conclusion that we can no longer overlook the uninterrupted influx of rubbish from south [sic] Korea.”

“This is just an unethical crime,” Kim Yo-jong denounced. “What matters is the fact that the south Korean puppets are still thrusting leaflets and dirty objects into our territory. We must counter it toughly.”

Kim promised a “deadly retaliatory” measure against Seoul, without elaborating.

The North Korean regime routinely uses Kim Yo-jong to threaten South Korea, which it is still technically at war with 72 years after the onset of the Korean War. Kim threatened to use nuclear weapons to annihilate the existence of South Korea in April and has similarly threatened American President Joe Biden on multiple occasions.

Pyongyang first publicized its accusations against South Korea in July, claiming that North Korean soldiers on the southern border had become the first known patients carrying the virus in the country. North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun state newspaper claimed that the soldiers had “contacted with alien things in a hill around barracks and residential quarters in Ipho-ri early in April,” presumably meaning leaflets of humanitarian aid from South Korea.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry responded to Kim Yo-jong’s speech on Thursday with a statement “express[ing] strong regret over North Korea’s insolent and threatening remarks based on repeated groundless claims regarding the inflow of the coronavirus at the national meeting on reviewing anti-epidemic measures.”

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