It was quite a sudden bit of news when Kim Jong-un, speaking at a high-level Party meeting at the end of June of 2021, warned of “grave consequences” as a result of senior officials neglecting the country’s COVID-19 prevention measures. This statement caused a lot of interest and controversy in the international mass-media with North Korea experts divided on what sort of event could have happened. Was it really that North Korea detected its first COVID-19 case? Was there a breach of quarantine measures? Or was it something completely different?
