Kim Jong-Un's 'Regime Lives And Die By Propaganda,' Experts Say On North Korea COVID-19 Cases

North Korea said its COVID-19 outbreak cooled down completely with no fever cases in the past 3 days but, according to experts, Kim Jong-un's propaganda has obfuscated the reality of the pandemic in the country.

What Happened: For the first time since detecting its initial COVID-19 cases in May, North Korea on Saturday said it recorded no new fever cases and has since then not reported even a single COVID-19 case.

While the state media praised the supreme leader and said the victory over COVID-19 showed "the organizational power and unity unique to the society of [North Korea]," experts strongly believe the numbers have been manipulated to "show the people that it is fully in control of the situation."

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"It is important for the North Korean leadership to show the people that it is fully in control of the situation," Rachel Minyoung Lee, a senior analyst at the Open Nuclear Network in Vienna and an expert on the North Korean state media, told the Financial Times.

"But it is also risky for state media to create too large a disconnect between the regime's claims and the experience of citizens," she said. "The regime lives and dies by propaganda."

Earlier, Lee Yo Han, a professor at Ajou University Graduate School of Public Health in South Korea, told the Associated Press that "realistically speaking, hundreds of thousands of daily fever cases becoming zero in less than three months is something impossible."

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