North Korea has kicked off a rare political event that would happen every five years or so, with about 5,000 people – including leader Kim Jong Un – meeting indoors without masks and sitting close to each other on Tuesday.
Although it is impossible to verify whether face masks were worn at any one time, none of the images released by North Korean KCNA News on Wednesday are of the Workers Party Congress shows people wearing masks indoors.
From a propaganda point of view, the images make sense: North Korea claims it has not recorded a single case of Covid-19, so it is a way to reinforce the story of holding a high-level meeting without masks.
But almost no one believes that North Korea was spared from a pandemic that infected more than 86 million people and killed nearly 2 million people. In fact, Kim’s regime recognizes the danger of the virus and has gone to great lengths to stop its spread.
Almost all travel to the country ceased shortly after the virus originated a year ago, and internal travel was also severely restricted. North Korean state media regularly carries articles reminding its people of the importance of its anti-epidemic campaign. And the government allegedly executed two people 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 reacting awake because he knows that the dilapidated healthcare infrastructure is unlikely to contain a major outbreak of Covid-19.
This makes the photos of the meeting on Tuesday all the more surprising. Perhaps North Korea believes the safeguards it instituted were good enough to allow participants not to wear masks to the meeting. This is a unique event that North Korea does not want to postpone – it is only the eighth party congress in North Korea’s history and the second of Kim’s tenure. The last one held before Kim came to power was in 1980.
But to keep it is a risk. If just one of the 5,000 people who traveled across the country to attend the meeting had Covid-19 and were contagious, it means that Kim may have started an incredibly important political meeting with a super-distributor event .