Through an essay by Tsutomu Nishioka in the monthly Seiron, this chapter examines North Korea’s claim of “zero” Wuhan virus infections, despite reports of pneumonia deaths, cremation orders, border closures, food shortages, foreign-currency depletion, and declining loyalty among officials. It reveals how dictatorships pile lie upon lie to protect the dictator, worsening the suffering of the people.

2020-03-27
A dictatorship always lies in order to protect the dictator.
In order to maintain that lie, it tells a new lie.
Because an order once given by a dictator cannot be overturned, the situation grows worse and worse.
Yesterday’s Sankei Shimbun also proved that the Sankei Shimbun is now the most decent newspaper.
The following is from an essay published in Seiron by Mr. Tsutomu Nishioka, one of Japan’s great benefactors, who, as a scholar, verified that the military comfort women issue was a fabrication by the Asahi Shimbun, continued to criticize it, and finally made the Asahi Shimbun admit it.
North Korea’s crisis of “zero” infections.
Tsutomu Nishioka.
“From the border regions to Pyongyang and the Sinuiju area, the natural disease is spreading, and the situation is extremely serious. It is a hopeless state in which people either starve to death or contract the natural disease, become infected, and die.”
This is a passage from a letter sent from inside North Korea to a Christian organization.
Why are there no infected people?
Even now, North Korea continues to say that there is not a single person infected with the Wuhan virus, but since February there have been many patients dying suddenly of pneumonia.
By order of the authorities, the causes of death are recorded as “influenza,” “acute pneumonia,” and the like, and if anyone asks whether it might be a coronavirus infection, he is subjected to a crackdown by the Ministry of State Security.
An order had been issued that, when someone died of pneumonia, the hospital should take responsibility for cremating the body, but because there are so many dead, it is said that families have now been made to cremate the bodies except in the case of those with no relatives.
Recently, officials and the newly wealthy bear the cost of expensive light oil and cremate bodies, but ordinary people have continued to bury them.
Since February, the authorities have made cremation compulsory for those who died of pneumonia and have not charged the cost.
There were few crematoriums to begin with, and confusion is occurring as many bodies are brought in.
There are deaths even in Pyongyang.
I have obtained astonishing information that 200 officials of the party and security organs have died of coronavirus.
In early March, six countries, including Germany, France, and Switzerland, suspended embassy operations and evacuated their staff.
Chairman Kim Jong Un leaves Pyongyang except when there are events and moves from one luxurious villa to another in cities on the Sea of Japan side.
He is said to avoid meeting people as much as possible and to make decisions in writing.
According to the commander of U.S. Forces Korea, because of infections, the North Korean military halted activity for 30 days, and aircraft did not fly for 24 days.
The lifeline of foreign currency is also drying up.
Even when ordinary residents develop fever and cough and go to a hospital, they receive only prescriptions for colds or influenza and cannot receive satisfactory treatment.
Because there are no medicines in the hospitals, they have no choice but to go to the market and buy them themselves.
They are already malnourished, and in the cold winter there is no satisfactory heating, so if they contract pneumonia, their condition immediately worsens.
Signs of mass starvation have also begun to appear.
In February, the market prices of staple foods, rice and corn, rose by about 30 percent.
In Pyongyang, one kilogram of rice rose from 4,500 won to 5,800 won, and corn from 1,100 won to 1,500 won.
In some places, prices rose by 150 to 200 percent.
Immediately, the Ministry of People’s Security, the ordinary police, and the Ministry of State Security moved to impose price controls.
As a result, merchants began holding back goods, and some wealthy people are using back channels to carry out speculative hoarding.
Households with a little money buy a year’s worth of rice and corn in autumn, when prices are lowest, but low-income households cannot do that.
They have managed to live from day to day by earning cash through petty trade and buying food at the market.
However, goods have stopped coming from China altogether, and they can no longer earn daily cash.
As a result, people in the lowest strata have begun to starve to death.
As those concerned know well, the economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council in 2017 under the leadership of Japan and the United States were unprecedentedly severe.
The foreign currency that Kim Jong Un needs as governing funds to maintain the dictatorship and the luxurious lives of his family has begun to dry up, and his lifeline was the foreign currency brought in by tourists from China.
Therefore, using what little foreign currency remained, construction was being carried out to build new tourist facilities in various places.
The Moon Jae-in administration in South Korea had also announced a policy of allowing individual tourism by South Koreans.
All of that has now come to nothing.
In the late 1990s, there was a tragedy in which the distribution of staple food to ordinary residents stopped and more than three million people starved to death.
In North Korea, that period is called the “Arduous March.”
After that, residents survived by doing business in the markets, but that business has become sluggish, and another “Arduous March” may come again.
Residents are saying, “At that time, everyone believed in the party and died, but this time we will not die in silence.”
The situation worsens in order to protect the dictator.
The loyalty of officials has fallen to the ground.
Already since last year, the rations provided only to officials of the party, military, and security organs, and to necessary industries such as coal mines, had rapidly deteriorated.
There have been several attempted assassinations of Kim Jong Un, and top officials have been purged one after another.
Now that a national survival crisis has come because of the coronavirus, officials are whispering to one another, “The country will perish because of those two young ones, Kim Jong Un and Yo Jong.”
The deaths caused by the spread of the virus and the starvation deaths caused by the inability to do business in the markets have both been brought about by Kim Jong Un’s mistaken policy decisions.
A dictatorship always lies in order to protect the dictator.
In order to maintain that lie, it tells a new lie.
Because an order once given by a dictator cannot be overturned, the situation grows worse and worse.
In order to protect the health of the dictator Kim Jong Un, the borders were closed without regard for the lives of the people.
Yet, fearing that Kim Jong Un’s honor would be damaged if the international community learned of the miserable state of North Korea’s hospitals, which have been advertised as being in this earthly paradise, the regime still lies that there are no patients, and by doing so it is itself refusing the international medical assistance it should be able to receive.
Friends who are in contact with people inside North Korea say that the present crisis is qualitatively different from those of the past, and that if things continue as they are, something may happen in the core of the regime.
Tsutomu Nishioka.