Outbreak?

Asian dictatorships haven’t had an especially good record against the rash of new viruses lately. Now comes word that bird flu has made its way into North Korea, and that the starving nation, which depended on chicken for 13% of its meat supply (how does anyone know this?), has been slaughtering thousands of the birds and burning their carcasses. The latter may be a wise precaution in light of recent reports that starving North Koreans–the vast majority of whom probably eat meat only on the rarest of occasions–were digging up the buried carcasses of other recent cullings. Let’s hope that South Korea, in its haste to stand up North Korea as a pool of cheap non-union labor, hasn’t let any of these birds reach store shelves.

South Korea and the U.N. are promising aid, no doubt realizing the potential for an epidemic in a weak, undernourished population living in unsanitary conditions and willing to risk anything for something to eat. Expect the regime to permit a token presence of foreign assistance at most, given their recent announcement that they’re kicking out existing U.N. food aid workers (explanation: “they’re no longer needed”). The regime has long depended on keeping North Koreans unaware of the better conditions in other countries, feels threatened by the increased inflow of outside information in recent years, and is in the middle of a ruthless crackdown to stop it.

The regime, as usual, will tolerate premature mortality among its citizens for the sake of internal control. But closed societies tend to be vulnerable to rumors and panic, and rumors of an epidemic could have a powerfully destabilizing effect.

UPDATE: Typos fixed. My apologies for the pre-coffee posting.

UPDATE II: Well this is certainly interesting. Remember that unexplained postponement of the North Korean parliament’s meeting last month? Our friends at the Unification Ministry (reader beware) offer this explanation:

“Analyzing all information we’ve got so far, the intelligence community concluded the delay was caused by the avian influenza outbreak,” a ranking official of South Korea’s Ministry of Unification said. . . . “With more than 600 delegates from all over the country supposed to gather in Pyongyang for the legislative meeting, there was concern the disease would spread uncontrollably,” the Unification Ministry source said. In connection with the Supreme People’s Assembly session, North Korean officials usually tour poultry farms, other cooperatives and power plants in and around Pyongyang.

It also raises a question of whether South Korea may have imported infected birds, given that the above-linked story in the original piece, dated March 15th, reported that Seoul was still planning to import 40 tons of chickens. But here is what the Joongang’s latest piece says:

The report could be wrong; on the other hand, the Unification Ministry’s passion for keeping secrets to avoid offense could potentially have interfered with getting out the word to stop all imports. Reading these reports together–and they’re from the same paper–it sounds like the Unification Ministry knew there was a serious health risk on the 11th, but had not told the Agriculture and Forestry Ministry about it four full days later, meaning that the latter was still telling the press that the imports were an imminent go and no one should worry, since North Korea had “strict quality controls.”

In a word: oops!

Another unanswered question (for me, anyway) is whether the disease can be carried only by live birds, or can be contracted by eating one. At the very least, however, you have to question the Unification Ministry’s judgment in not alerting the public–not to mention other ministries–to the potential danger.