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North Koreans wearing masks partake in a patriotic ceremony with North Korean flags in Wonsan, Kangwon Province, on Oct. 28. (Yonhap News)

When North Korea tested 10,462 people for COVID-19, all tests came back negative, the World Health Organization said.

Radio Free Asia reported on Nov. 3 that the North Korean authorities hadn’t reported a single case of COVID-19 as of Oct. 29, quoting a weekly report on COVID-19 in South Asia and East Asia published by the WHO on Oct. 30.

But the report indicates that North Korea’s health authorities have been gradually scaling up testing for the novel coronavirus, administering tests to 3,374 individuals in mid-September, 7,266 on Oct. 8, 8,770 on Oct. 15, and 10,426 on Oct. 29.

RFA quoted Kee B. Park, a professor at Harvard Medical School and a member of the Korean American Medical Association, as saying that the increasing numbers of people being tested in North Korea might reflect the arrival of the testing kits being sent by numerous international organizations. Park believes that more testing kits have reached North Korea.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in China at the beginning of the year, North Korea has taken energetic measures to prevent the spread of the infectious disease, such as swiftly closing the border with China.

On Oct. 30, North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency placed the blame for the fatal shooting of a South Korean fisheries official in the West Sea on South Korea, reflecting the North’s insistence on maintaining its stance on controlling the coronavirus. According to the KCNA, the shooting occurred because the South had failed to maintain control on its citizens in contested waters during the great peril of the pandemic.

By Gil Yun-hyung, staff reporter

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