Pyongyang has used strict border controls and other steps to bring the deadly COVID-19 pandemic under “safe and stable control” in North Korea, the country’s United Nations ambassador Kim Song said on Tuesday.

Addressing the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Kim said “far-sighted leadership” and a “people-first policy” under leader Kim Jong Un had stopped the “inflow and spread” of a coronavirus pathogen that has claimed 1 million lives globally.

“In response to the continuing world pandemic infections, a series of state measures are now being taken to block the virus inflow into the country and all people