The North Korea Thread

Calelari · 2022-05-11T19:38:29.297Z

All zombies are slow.

/runs away

tomchick · 2022-05-11T19:55:45.224Z

Calelari:

All zombies are slow.

/runs away

If all zombies were slow, you wouldn’t be running. Check and mate, Calelari!

-Tom

Calelari · 2022-05-11T21:34:34.814Z

Thus, my attempts to reignite the slow vs fast zombie opinion wars fails. Like an NK food supply.

ShivaX · 2022-05-11T21:52:07.247Z

NK food supply technically includes cannibalism, so I feel like there is still a zombie angle to be had.

Djscman · 2022-05-12T12:46:05.286Z

Or is COVID just the cover story to hide the zombies?

NPR.org

North Korea confirms 1st COVID outbreak as Kim orders lockdown

While the scale of the outbreak isn't known, it could have serious consequences because the country has a poor health care system and its 26 million people are believed to be mostly unvaccinated.

Woolen_Horde · 2022-05-12T12:54:25.371Z

I figured it was COVID. Crazy that they’re confirming their first case in May of 2022, but since their only “open” border is with China, it’s feasible.

MrGrumpy · 2022-05-12T12:58:14.167Z

Any reports of mass teeth pulling yet?

Skipper · 2022-05-12T13:34:52.516Z

MrGrumpy:

Any reports of mass teeth pulling yet?

No, but the leeches have been ordered!

MrGrumpy · 2022-05-12T14:57:23.048Z

A little pain never hurt anyone.

Dejin · 2022-05-13T05:10:40.710Z

RFI – 13 May 22

North Korea confirms first Covid-19 death in 'explosive' outbreak

North Korea confirmed its first ever Covid-19 death on Friday, saying fever was spreading "explosively" nationwide and tens of thousands of people were being isolated and treated after falling sick.

“A fever whose cause couldn’t be identified explosively spread nationwide from late April,” the official Korean Central News Agency said.

“Six persons died (one of them tested positive for the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron,)” it added.
…

“On May 12 alone, some 18,000 persons with fever occurred nationwide and as of now up to 187,800 people are being isolated and treated,” KCNA said.

It is likely that the massive nationwide outbreak is linked to a huge military parade held in Pyongyang on April 25, said Cheong Seong-chang of the Sejong Institute.

“Holding a military parade attended by a large crowd, when Omicron was raging in neighboring China, shows Pyongyang was overconfident in their capabilities to fight and prevent the virus,” he told AFP.

North Korea was likely to see “major chaos” due to the rapid spread of Omicron, he said, given that the country is currently reporting nearly 20,000 cases in a single day.

Skipper · 2022-05-13T14:05:50.658Z

For once my sympathy goes out to that whole country. Nobody is vaccinated, their medical facilities are way smaller and worse than anything in the west, and a regime that will probably throw lives at the problem in some way to make it even more worse. Not to mention this would probably be one of the more aggressive variants going in, and if it lingers we can expect more variants coming back out.

Tortilla · 2022-05-13T15:07:55.027Z

Skipper:

For once my sympathy goes out to that whole country. Nobody is vaccinated, their medical facilities are way smaller and worse than anything in the west, and a regime that will probably throw lives at the problem in some way to make it even more worse. Not to mention this would probably be one of the more aggressive variants going in, and if it lingers we can expect more variants coming back out.

Agree on the sympathy thing, but NK is not going to add significantly more risk of variants I think. Not compared to the petri dishes of every other continent (except maybe Antartica) where COVID is still spreading to fresh targets everywhere.

Skipper · 2022-05-13T15:10:23.321Z

I sincerely hope that’s the case. All I know is the longer a virus can remain within hosts, the higher the eventual percentage to mutate goes up. And here we have a petri dish of approximately 25 million people with sketchy immunity or antibodies, at best. And that petri dish sits beside South Korea and China.

ShivaX · 2022-05-13T15:22:41.622Z

Odds are good that North Korea starts doing things that makes China welding people in their apartments look tame.

BennyProfane · 2022-05-13T16:41:53.853Z

ShivaX:

Odds are good that North Korea starts doing things that makes China welding people in their apartments look tame.

Like welding people TO their apartments.

rrmorton · 2022-05-13T17:16:04.653Z

Or supergluing them to their local Starbucks.

inactive_user · 2022-05-13T17:16:18.518Z

BennyProfane:

Like welding people TO their apartments.

main-qimg-c479be0f6e02f4969f1bf7aae54c2b2a-c

Canuck · 2022-05-16T00:59:27.800Z

Jesus, I had no idea ICBMs could fly that high. I naively assumed that they flew through the atmosphere.

Tortilla · 2022-05-16T02:29:37.864Z

Canuck:

Jesus, I had no idea ICBMs could fly that high. I naively assumed that they flew through the atmosphere.

Nope, ICBMs and orbital launch vehicles are almost the same thing. Now you know why the US funded the hell out of NASA through the early and middle cold war. The space-race-to-show-up-the-Russkis was a nice PR side effect but the primary goal was investment in very real military technologies.

ShivaX · 2022-05-16T03:13:24.515Z

Generally they don’t need to go that high. Cold War ICBMs sat closer to 1k miles up and had much better range than what NK is doing.