North Korea Takes COVID help, Pyongyang's 50k New Apartments & October 2021 North Korean Headlines — Crossing Borders - Helping North Korean Refugees and Orphans

NORTH KOREA BEGAN TO ACCEPT COVID AID FROM WHO

COVID-19 medical supplies from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other UN agencies arrived in North Korea, which signals that the regime is easing one of the world’s strictest pandemic border closures.
The medicines and medical supplies sent by the WHO include personal protective equipment, gloves, masks and COVID-10 test reagents.
According to the WHO office in Pyongyang, North Korea’s Public Health Ministry permitted items that had been stranded in China since January 2020 to be shipped through the Chinese seaport of Dalian a few months earlier.
Considering the devastating effects the strict border controls have on North Korea’s economy, which was already suffering the fallout from international sanctions, it appears Pyongyang is ready to reopen its border for trade as well as to receive foreign aid.

It is reported that the Romania embassy in Pyongyang had closed on 9 October 2021 due to harsh COVID-19 restrictions. The two remaining Romanian diplomats had left North Korea via China, meaning there are now no European diplomats left in North Korea.
The exodus of North Korea’s last western presence has been described by John Everard, the UK’s former Ambassador to North Korea, as a loss that significantly deepens its isolation from the rest of the world since Sweden opened the first foreign embassy in Pyongyang in the 1970s.
Sources also indicate that there would be uncertainties over the reopening of the embassy due to the high costs involved in re-securing the facilities.
Following the collective exit of diplomats since the pandemic, the only countries to retain an embassy in North Korea are China, Cuba, Egypt, Laos, Mongolia, Palestine, Russia, Syria and Vietnam.

A local North Korean man was “fired upon and shot dead” when the Storm Corps discovered him returning to the country from China on 30 September 2021.
It is reported that many Hoeryong residents witnessed the border patrol fishing his body out of the Tumen River on 2 October 2021.
The border patrol had later cremated the body and the Ministry of State Security was reportedly high-handed with the family when turning over the remains, claiming that the cremation complies with the “state’s highest emergency quarantine system” and that they “should accept this without complaint...[as the man had] engaged in treason by violating state quarantine policy in going to China”. The family was also ordered to mourn in silence at home.
The man was in his 50s and had been missing since mid-September. His neighbours speculated that he had left somewhere because he had nothing to eat. It was later revealed that due to his gradually worsening financial situation, he had crossed the border to visit a relative in China.

During the Eighth Party Congress in January 2021, North Korea had pledged to build 50,000 new homes in Pyongyang by 2025, the 80th anniversary of the founding of the ruling party, by building 10,000 homes each year.
The new apartments are to be built in five Pyongyang districts: Songhwa and Songsin districts in east Pyongyang, Sep. 9 District in central Pyongyang, and Sopo and Kumchon districts in west Pyongyang. Tens of thousands of square meters of land in Mangyondae, the western area of Pyongyang and the birthplace of Kim Il-sung, had been cleared for this construction project.
However, North Korea’s mass-scale construction project faces serious difficulties amid economic challenges and the pandemic. In particular, power and heating issues as a result of chronic energy shortages pose additional challenges to workers on site. Sources further suggest that not only have mines and farms suspended production due to blackouts, residents of central Pyongyang have also experienced electricity shortages.