March 28, 2024
COVID-19

North Korean rural areas active as ‘fever’ rips through country

Farmers and other agricultural workers engaging rice fields and walking outside amid COVID-19 ‘lockdown’ orders

Three lookout points northeast of Seoul all revealed normal levels of activity on the North Korean side of the border, photos taken by NK News showed on Monday, despite a COVID-19 outbreak leading to a nationwide lockdown.

Dozens of people could be seen working on apparent rice fields, walking between buildings and working with animals, close-up photos from South Korea’s Ganghwa and Gyodong islands near the inter-Korean border showed. That’s despite hundreds of thousands of people developing “fever” symptoms between Saturday and Sunday alone. State media confirmed North Korea’s first COVID-19 outbreak last week.

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