SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korean leader Kim Jong-un urged ruling party officials to undertake a new “forced march” of labor and sacrifice, state media reported on Friday, linking the current economic crisis and a period of famine and disaster in the 1990s.
The “Forced March” is a term adopted by officials to rally citizens during the famine that killed up to 3 million North Koreans after the fall of the Soviet Union, which was a major supporter of the Communist founders of Pyongyang.
This period is often referred to as a historic event, but Kim Jong-un’s apparent comparison to current issues comes after he said earlier in the week that the country was facing “the worst situation in its history. “.
His comments were made in a speech on Thursday at the closing of a conference for Workers’ Party officials, where he urged them to be more proactive and responsible in implementing the country’s new five-year economic plan. , adopted at a party convention in January.
“I decided to ask the Workers’ Party … to lead another more difficult ‘Forced March’ in order to relieve our people, if only a little,” Kim Jong-un said, according to a report. the official North Korean news agency KCNA.
The party must reward the loyalty of the people and become a real “servant” to them, he said.
North Korea has not reported a single confirmed case of the coronavirus, but US and South Korean officials have questioned the idea that it escaped the COVID-19 outbreak.
The country has halted almost all cross-border travel, limited trade to a minimum and imposed other restrictions to prevent an outbreak.
These measures, combined with international sanctions imposed due to North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, have weighed on the country’s economy and raised fears of a humanitarian crisis.
An independent panel of experts tasked with monitoring UN sanctions recently reported that international aid groups are struggling to reach vulnerable women and children in North Korea due to containment measures due to the pandemic.
An official from the North Korean public health ministry released a statement on Tuesday denying that children are suffering from malnutrition and that the reports aim to tarnish the country’s image.
(Josh Smith; French version Camille Raynaud)
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