: What Happens Next with North Korea Now That Kim Jong-unâ€™s Back #WorldNEWS Late last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un—who since mid-April had been rumored to be either dead, brain-dead,

What Happens Next with North Korea Now That Kim Jong-unâ€™s Back #WorldNEWS
Late last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un—who since mid-April had been rumored to be either dead, brain-dead, or otherwise incapacitated—made a return to the public eye (surprise!) when he appeared at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new fertilizer plant. His reemergence has put concerns about his health on the backburner (for now), which means North Korean observers can go back to worrying about how coronavirus is impacting North Korea.
Why It Matters:
Coronavirus is the kind of multidimensional crisis that hits a country’s economy, political stability, and relations with other countries all at the same time. And for a country like North Korea, such a triple-punch could lead Kim to lash out internationally (think: missile tests, brash rhetoric, cyberattacks, etc…), the last thing the world needs during a pandemic.

For the record, North Korea claims that there are no coronavirus cases in the country. Obviously, that should be taken with a whole mountain of salt (North Korea’s neighbor China says hi). But if worries about North Korea’s handling of the worst pandemic the world has seen in over a century weren’t enough, it also comes on the heels of a poor harvest season. The last time North Korea had widespread famine in the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of people starved to death (at least).
Coronavirus compounds concerns about food supplies, as the pandemic’s impact on global supply chains combined with international sanctions limits the ability of North Korea to secure the critical items it needs to feed itself; there are already reports that fertilizer and other critical farming inputs aren’t reaching North Korea because of quarantine precautions (which explains why Kim decided to make his “return” at a fertilizer plant).
In normal circumstances, North Korea’s first port of call is China, but China is busy trying to control its own epidemic. China is also likely feeling less generous with aid given its own economic squeeze during the pandemic and wary of engaging in trade for fear of importing Coronavirus from North Korea… not to mention wanting to avoid ticking off the U. S. more than it already has. To that end, China has tightened border restrictions, making it even more difficult for North Korea to conduct business—legitimate or otherwise—with its main access point to the outside world.
There are rumblings that prices of imported goods have increased in North Korea, and that Pyongyang is leaning on businesses to accept government bonds as payment for what they supply to it. That’s never a good sign; if North Korea’s economy deteriorates significantly alongside a poor harvest season, that boosts the risk that Kim will act up and out.
What Happens Next:
If North Korea were any other country in the world, it would ask for help in times of crisis.