North Korea issued 'shoot-to-kill' orders to prevent COVID-19 outbreak: US Commander

rth Korea has issued "shoot-to-kill" orders to prevent COVID-19 from entering country, said Robert Abrams, commander of US Forces Korea (USFK). Abrams during an online event organised by Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said that "underurished" country with a poor health system has instructed its forces to kill anyone trying to smuggle goods into country or enter illegally from China. Surprisingly, rth Korea has t reported a single case of COVID-19 so far despite sharing border with China, from where disease originated. 

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'To prevent COVID outbreak'

"rth Korean smugglers been trying to to get across and as a result, regime issued out instructions so w y've got an additional buffer zone, one or two kilometers up on Chinese border y have got rth Korean SOF (Special Operations Forces) out re managing se things, Strike forces, y've got shoot-to-kill orders in place and this is fundamentally about preventing COVID from getting into rth Korea," Abrams said during event. 

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"Everyone's aware of sanctions on rth Korea and sanctions historically always take a long time. effectiveness of sanctions early on was sort of varied but with COVID-19 that has accelerated effects of sanctions on rth Korea. y closed ir border at end of January. If you look just back at sanctions of 2017 that dropped Chinese imports by about 50 percent and n y rebounded last year. When border shutdown with COVID-19 it dropped imports by China with 85 percent. re is a cumulative effect ecomically of COVID and sanctions," Robert Abrams said on Thursday. 

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Abrams said that measures are "understandable" because of country's poor health system and underurished population as y don't have medical capacity and a very large outbreak could be devastating so y have taken matter into ir own hands. He furr added that effects of three back-to-back typhoons are also one of reasons that regime has issued such orders as y are focused on getting ir country recovered. 

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