North Korea started a rare political event that is expected to take place every five years or so with some 5,000 people – including leader Kim Jong Un – gathered indoors without masks and sitting together on Tuesday.
While it is impossible to verify that facial covers were ever used, none of the images released by the North Korean state news KCNA on Wednesday of the Workers Party Congress shows people wearing masks at home.
From the point of view of advertising, the images make sense: North Korea claims not to have registered a single case of Covid-19, so holding a high-level meeting without masks is a way of reinforcing this narrative.
But hardly anyone believes that North Korea was spared a pandemic that infected more than 86 million people and killed almost 2 million. In fact, the Kim regime recognizes the danger of the virus and goes to great lengths to prevent its spread.
Almost all travel to the country ceased shortly after the virus appeared a year ago, and domestic travel is also severely restricted. The North Korean state media regularly publishes articles reminding its people of the importance of its emergency anti-epidemic campaign. And the regime allegedly executed two people for failing to follow Covid-19 guidelines, including a customs officer who did not follow virus prevention rules when importing goods from China.
Experts believe Pyongyang is acting vigilantly because he knows that his dilapidated health infrastructure is unlikely to contain a major Covid-19 outbreak.
This makes the photos from Tuesday’s meeting even more intriguing. Perhaps North Korea believes that the safeguards it has implemented were good enough to allow participants 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 Congress in North Korea’s history and the second of Kim’s term. The last one performed before Kim came to power was in 1980.
But holding it is a risk. If only one of the 5,000 people who traveled from across the country to attend the meeting had Covid-19 and was contagious, it means that Kim may have just started an incredibly important political meeting with an over-propagated event.