“One year of North Korean corona blockade… Pyongyang diplomat, it’s difficult to buy flour.”

Russian Ambassador Alexandre Machegora said on the 8th (local time) that diplomats in Pyongyang are experiencing a shortage of daily necessities more than a year after North Korea closed the border to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus infection (Corona 19).

In an interview with the Russian media Interfax News, Ambassador Macegora said, “There are no foreigners who have entered North Korea until now due to the border blockade that took place in January of last year, and diplomats and staff left North Korea on a large scale, and many embassies have stopped working. Said this.

He continued, “The North Korean authorities openly admit that there is not enough medical facilities to cope with the outbreak of Corona 19, so what it can do is thorough blocking of inflow.” “The import of goods and raw materials was stopped due to the border blockade, causing many companies to They closed the school, people lost their jobs, and children were virtually unable to go to school all year round.”

He added, “As the blockade lengthened, it became difficult to buy even basic necessities such as flour and sugar in Pyongyang, and even if you do not have suitable clothes and shoes, the price is three to four times higher than before the blockade,” he added. “Employees of the Russian embassy exchange clothes and shoes with each other and wear them on their children,” he said.

Ambassador Macegora also said that due to the North Korean authorities’ quarantine measures, diplomats and staff of international organizations in North Korea were banned from moving outside Pyongyang, and that the young children of diplomats were not allowed to leave the embassy.

According to intelligence authorities, North Korea issued an order to establish a 1 to 2 km corona 19 buffer zone on the border area of ​​China and Russia last summer and kill animals as well as people approaching the area. In addition, even in the midst of economic hardships, they neglected food aided by China and stopped fishing and salt production, fearing that the seawater would be polluted.

Meanwhile, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un convened a plenary meeting of the Labor Party on the 8th and “pointed out the passive and voshinist tendencies of the national economic guidance organs,” the Chosun Central News Agency reported on the 9th. The communication explained the background of the meeting, “to deliberate and decide on the business plan for 2021”.

As problems emerged in the process of preparing detailed plans for each field of the five-year national economic development plan presented at the 8th party conference last month, they broke the convention of holding plenary meetings once or twice a year and began to prescribe extreme drugs.

Professor Lim-chul of Kyungnam University analyzed that “It is unusual to have executives of major factories and enterprises (in addition to the Central Party executives) attend the plenary meeting,” and “reflects the will to achieve the goal of the five-year national economic development plan.”

Reporter Jeong Yong-soo [email protected]