WHO Ships COVID-19 Medical Supplies To North Korea

The World Health Organization (WHO) has started shipping COVID-19 medical supplies into North Korea, a possible sign that the North is easing one of the world's strictest pandemic border closures to receive outside help.

Photo Insert: Pyongyang, North Korea

WHO said in a weekly monitoring report that it has started the shipment of essential COVID-19 medical supplies through the Chinese port of Dalian for "strategic stockpiling and further dispatch" to North Korea.

Edwin Salvador, WHO's representative to North Korea, said in an email to the Associated Press Thursday that some items, including emergency health kits and medicine, have reached the North Korean port of Nampo after North Korean authorities allowed the WHO and other UN agencies to send supplies that had been stuck in Dalian.

"Consequently, we have been able to transport some of our items by ship to Nampo ... (including) emergency health kits, medicines, and medical supplies that would support essential health services at primary health care centers," Salvador said.

"We are informed that WHO items along with supplies sent by other UN agencies are currently still under quarantine at the seaport."

Describing its anti-virus campaign was a matter of "national existence," North Korea had severely restricted cross-border traffic and trade for the past two years despite the strain on its already crippled economy.

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