Seoul (AFP)

The isolation that North Korea has imposed on itself against the epidemic of viral pneumonia which is raging in China is its only protection against a disease that its fragile health system could not contain, according to experts.

North Korea was among the first countries to close its border with China, which is its first trading partner and primary aid provider. It suspended air and rail links, banned tourist visits and imposed a 30-day quarantine for people suspected of carrying the virus.

Authorities in Pyongyang say they are monitoring the situation. The official daily Rodong Sinmun said it again on Friday: "Fortunately, the infection with the new coronavirus has not yet entered our country".

- Weak medical infrastructure -

But if that happened, the country would be threatened with health chaos, according to experts. North Korea, subject to multiple international economic sanctions for its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, has a weak medical infrastructure.

Hospitals suffer from an irregular supply of water and electricity and chronic drug shortages.

"If the disease is triggered, the North Korean system will be powerless," predicted Choi Jung-hun, a former North Korean doctor who moved to South Korea in 2012. "It will get out of hand."

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), North Korea lacks "essential drugs", materials for laboratories, "medical, therapeutic and diagnostic equipment and supplies for interventions critical and urgent sanitation ".

In the 2019 global health security index compiled by a research center at the Johns-Hopkins University, North Korea ranked 193 out of 195 countries, only ahead of Somalia and Equatorial Guinea.

Pyongyang has already resorted in the past to the method of national isolation in the face of health threats.

The country has banned tourist visits for more than four months from October 2014 to protect itself from the Ebola virus, although no cases have been detected in Asia.

And it blocked all travel for six months during the SARS epidemic, which in 2002-2003 killed nearly 650 people in mainland China and Hong Kong.

Choi, who is now a professor at a South Korean research institute, said that during a measles epidemic in 2006, he was posted on trains going from the North Korean port of Chongjin to the capital Pyongyang with the order to detect all people with signs of fever.

"The most crucial point is to defend the regime in Pyongyang," he told AFP, noting that fear of the virus had caused leader Kim Jong Un to not appear in public for more than three weeks.

- "National Survival" -

State media have in recent weeks provided wide coverage of anti-virus measures, described as a struggle for "national survival".

Officials wearing masks were shown holding emergency meetings, as were employees disinfecting public places.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has not contradicted Pyongyang's claim that there is no contamination in North Korean territory. "At the moment, there are no signals or indications that we are dealing with Covid-19 disease there," said Michael Ryan, director of emergencies at WHO.

However, defectors and information from the South Korean media claim that there have been infections. And Thae Yong Ho, former number two of the North Korean embassy in London who defected in 2016, doubts the reliability of the WHO information.

According to him, the international organizations present in the country are unable to establish the facts independently.

"The only information that the WHO office in Pyongyang can obtain is unilateral information from the regime," said the defector.

However, Kee Park, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School who participated in 18 medical missions to North Korea, stresses that the authorities have put in place "a maximum prevention strategy". "These measures reflect the government's realistic assessment of the fragility of its health system."

burs-sh / slb / qan / ax n / plh / ybl

© 2020 AFP