The afternoon the U.
That announcement was made in the Security Council, where China and Russia vetoed a resolution
“that would have imposed new sanctions on North Korea.”
All of this coincides with the country's first admitted outbreak of COVID-19.
Nick Schifrin has the story. The provisional agenda for this meeting is non-proliferation. In New York today, a failed attempt to further isolate North Korea. We cannot let this become the new norm. We cannot tolerate such dangerous and threatening behavior.
The Security Council rejected a U.S.-led resolution to sanction North Korea and deliver humanitarian aid because of Russian and Chinese vetoes. Through translator Chinese ambassador, John Jen, said sanctions would punish the people of North Korea whose official acronym is DPRK. Additional sanctions against DPRK will only act to the Ministry of DPRK people and, in the sense, neither right nor humane.
The vote was a response to North Korea's testing three missiles on Tuesday, including what the U.S. says was the sixth intercontinental ballistic missile launch just this year. The response wasn't only diplomatic, hours after the North Korean test South Korea and the U.S. launch short-range missiles and displayed dozens of American-made fighter jets. Already this year, the U.S. says North Korea has conducted 23 ballistic missile launches
and is trying to build an arsenal that can survive a U.S. attack. We've seen hypersonic missiles. We've seen submarine launched missiles. So, really, making and creating missiles that are harder to detect. Gene Lee is a senior fellow at the Wilson Center and a former journalist based in Pyongyang.
She says the test timing is no mistake. President Un and I committed to strengthening our close engagement. Immediately after President Biden's first Asia trip and a synchronized message from South Korea and President Yoon Suk-Yul to North Korea. President Biden and I shared serious concerns and agreed on the need to prioritise them over any other issue.
It's hard not to see this as a kind of rebuke or response to that show of strength. Interesting that it wasn't time to take place during the visit, but just after the visit.
“What's the significance of waiting, I suppose, until Biden left?”
Perhaps there's a little bit of a signal there, but he wants to raise tension. But I think he does eventually want to get back to negotiations. For years after North Korea's last nuclear test, US intelligence officials are also worried Pyongyang is excavating demolished tunnels that it's nuclear testing site and preparing another test.
The developments in advancements that every test makes in terms of those nuclear devices, they get more and more powerful each time.
Each of these tests is the closer to perfecting this technology, refining this technology. But North Korea now faces a different test and the military a new mobilization. Last week, Army Medix helped treat with the country calls cases of fever. Workers and hazmat suits stray buildings with disinfectant. Health workers visit residents suspected to be sick.
And the equivalent of Dr. Fauci gives daily updates. We are aggressively broadcasting informative programs as residents want to know about this epidemic disease clinical course in medicine treatments. Those programs tell citizens to make gargles with salt, drink herbal tea, and take painkillers, and they promote homemade cures. I disinfected the room with alcohol, burnt the plant mugwort, and circulated air.
“I think it can be treated like a regular cold.”
COVID is now openly discussed because Kim Jong-un himself declared a national emergency. North Korea officials say more than two and a half million, ten percent of the population got sick. I think it's a major, major outbreak, and it's also nationwide. It's an every province of North Korea. The Dr. Key Park is a neurosurgeon who's been training North Korean doctors for more than a decade.
He says the country's health infrastructure is ill-prepared. I'm quite concerned about the capacity of the North Korean health system to absorb the surge of patients. I think it's just a handful of ventilators.
I worry about things like oxygen, which is a critical component of treatment of this condition.
And then basic medical needs like drugs, IV fluids. North Korea had shut down its borders, and until recently claimed zero COVID cases. But the country partially reopened this past January and increased trade with China. This week officials said cases were dropping, but the population of North Korea is vulnerable. 40 percent are undernourished, and nobody is known to be vaccinated.
You've got the virus that came in ripping through the country, and you have a population that was unprepared. And two ways actually, one is you've got a vulnerable population that's undernourished on top of that.
You have a zero vaccination, and then knowing her community within the popula...
So far, North Korea has rejected all offers of vaccines, including from the US and UN.
But admitting a crisis might mean North Korea is open to receiving help, says Lee.
To cement his legacy, that it would be a different focus for Kim Jong-un and that he would start looking at form policy.
“And I think that also means looking for a way to signal to the outside world, that he's ready to start engaging, that he's ready to start reaching out.”
What North Korea is, perhaps not ready for fighting a virus that it's only now admitted it can't control.
For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Nick Schifrin. [ Music ]
