N.Korea Tightens Lockdown

North Korea has been put into tighter lockdown to prevent the spread of coronavirus, state media said Sunday.

The official Rodong Sinmun on Sunday said cities are being sealed off to block all routes of transmission "physically and completely."

The regime has belatedly accepted offers of quarantine supplies from the international community and South Korean charities despite officially insisting that there has been not been a single infection.

The daily said more quarantine checkpoints are being set up and "surveillance of the sky, rivers and streams" is intensifying. "We need to continue strict lockdown and seal-off along the borders and costs," which are the "surest and most reliable preemptive preventative measures."

Quarantine inspections are being stepped up on shipments at ports and railway stations along the borders with China and Russia.

In an interview with the official [North] Korean Central News Agency, Choe Chol-myong, a party official in Chagang Province, said, "We've set up more quarantine checkpoints, checked people's temperature and tested them for virus, and disinfected facilities in busy places such as... railway stations, bus stops, stores, and restaurants."

A source said anyone caught not wearing a mask in Pyongyang is being fined or even expelled to the provinces, and suspected coronavirus cases are forced into isolation in the countryside.

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