Korea virus threat puts Trump-Kim ‘face-off’ on hold

Bloomberg

The next showdown between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may need to wait until after the virus scare.
The US said that it would postpone joint military exercises planned for the coming weeks, as its ally South Korea copes with one of the world’s worst coronavirus outbreaks. The decision removes for now a looming friction point with North Korea, which has denounced the exercises as rehearsal for an invasion and a “main factor of screwing up tensions.”
Meanwhile, North Korea has turned inward since neighbouring China sounded the alarm about the new virus strain last month, shutting its borders and trumpeting its prevention campaigns in state media. Moves to provoke the US haven’t materialised since Kim told ruling party leaders on New Year’s Eve that he was no longer bound by a freeze on tests of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.
“The virus likely has delayed Pyongyang’s implementation of its US policy,” said Rachel Minyoung Lee, a Seoul-based analyst for NK News who focusses on North Korean state media. “North Korea has focussed on domestic issues after Kim Jong-un’s party plenum speech. After mid-January, the coronavirus has been added to its list of domestic priorities.”
This year was expected to bring a return to tensions on the Korean Peninsula after Kim spent much of last year threatening to take a “new path” in nuclear talks with the US in 2020 if Trump didn’t make a more appealing offer. The two leaders have made little progress since Trump walked out of their second formal summit last year in Hanoi.
Pressure has piled on Trump in recent days as markets have plummeted on fears the virus will slow the economy, while a whistle-blower cited by the New York Times and Washington Post accused the Department of Health and Human Services of a “failure to protect its employees” responsible
for managing the coronavirus outbreak.
The coronavirus outbreak, which has infected more than 85,000 and killed more than 2,900 worldwide, is particularly concerning to impoverished North Korea, which lacks the public health infrastructure of its more developed neighbours. While the country has yet to report any confirmed cases, the border closures have cut off a vital source of cash needed to soften the blow of international sanctions.
“As the novel coronavirus infection is hard to curb once it has spread, all the regions and units in the DPRK are intensifying their anti-epidemic work against its making inroads into the country with each passing day,” the official Korean Central News Agency said in a news report, referring to the country’s formal name.
The outbreak also poses risks to the allies, with South Korean cases surging to 1,700 in little more than a week.