In the Realm of the “Dear Leader”, Kim Jong-un’s North Korea

Biographical, Comparative politics, International Relations

Like the great majority of the world’s population I’ve never been to North Korea…but unlike most people I have been to the very edge of Kim Jong-un’s secretive “Hermit Kingdom”. In 2019 I ate at restaurants run by North Korean exiles in the vibrant, lively Chinese border city of Dandong (directly opposite the seemingly dead NK city of Sinŭiju). I have also bought North Korean souvenirs from ex-pat market stall-holders on the Yalu River, the DPRK’s western boundary. Technically, I can even boast of having penetrated deep into North Korean territorial waters, having sailed around and across the river in a tourist boat➊.

Source. CFR

Kim Jong-un took the helm of the North Korean regime in 2011, succeeding his father Kim Jong-Il. Given his youth, 28, and lack of experience, external observers have had doubts whether the novice could establish a lengthy hold over the country. But ten years later Kim Jong-un is still firmly in control. This can be explained by a number of factors.

The first two Supreme Leader Kims (Photo: Reuters)

Stalinist purges – Korean “Game of Thrones”
The Kim dynasty had been entrenched for over 60 years by the time it was Kim Jong-un’s turn, allowing him to inherit a stable regime commanding absolute authority as “Supreme Leader” (Suryong). Kim Jong-un also inherited the “Stalinist dictatorial public persona of his grandfather (cult of personality) and the political nous of his father” (Patrikeeff). On top of this the young Kim has adopted a ruthless approach to dealing with potential threats to his leadership through periodic purges … senior military figures removed from high office, politicians including his own uncle executed and a half-brother assassinated in Malaysia. In this Kim Jung-un (KJU) was following the pattern of his predecessors in “coup-proofing” his rule (playing off one institutional rival against another, coupled with the purging of latent threats) (Habib). Kim’s purge targets include the North Korean economic elites (the Donju who like the army had benefitted from the Supreme Leader’s patronage system). Purges keep the elites in a state of instability, unable to predict Kim’s moves (Michael Madden).

Flag of WPK

Hegemonic role of the Party
Another strategy employed by KJU to consolidate his hold on power was to reinvigorate the effectively obsolete Worker’s Party of Korea (WPK) as the core political organ of the state. This saw the emergence of a new pecking order under KJU – the rhetoric of Party / State / Army signalled the relegation of the military in politics to a role of secondary importance➋.

(Photo: Korean Central News Agency via AP Images)

The Kim Jong-un ‘vision’
Modernisation and beefing up the DPRK’s lethal strike force are high on the totem pole of KJU’s objectives. Kim has ploughed ahead with nuclear tests and missile launches in a transparent show of strength and intimidation aimed at the state’s enemies. The “Dear Leader”, as he likes to be called, is intent on more than military modernisation. Kim wants to be seen as a modern leader of a modern country, pursuing economic development as an instrument to “hook into the South Korean economic engine”…which goes a good way to explaining KJU’s diplomatic change of tack (the recent pivot to diplomatic relations with Seoul) (Ken Gause).

Leader Kim & Sister Kim

Succession plan?
The only apparent dark shadow on the landscape for Kim Jong-un➌ is the state of his own health. Overweight, a heavy smoker with a preference for rich imported foods and alcohol, rumours intensified after his three week disappearance in April 2021. Succession talk has surfaced with a possible candidate being Kim’s younger sister Kim Yo-jong.

“Crazy and irrational” Kim Jung-un
It’s tempting to write off KJU, with his erratic behaviour and bombastic pronouncements—as some sections of the mass media do—as crazy and irrational. Benjamin Habib demurs from the caricature image of Kim, contending that it deflects from the existence of a rational strategy by the regime. The argument goes that the nuclear flexing by KJU and the blustering official statements are all part of a calculated rhetoric.

(Source: The National Interest)

In this view Pyongyang’s raison d’etre in an ultimate zero-sum-game is it’s existential survival and the over-the-top weaponising is more about projecting a deterrence to South Korea, Japan and the US, rather than an aggressive intent to carry through with the threats. In the logic of North Korea’s circumstance, the use of military force is the “only credible security guarantee in what it perceives to be a strategically➍ hostile environment”. The country’s H-bomb/A-bomb and ballistic missile capability, Habib suggests, should not automatically be seen as signifying an intention to deploy on the part of the North Koreans (Habib).

Kim has stepped up the elaborate military parades recently (one in October 2020 and again in January 2021), this can be seen as a show of resilience for public consumption in the face of the triple threat to the country – Covid-19, a wave of economic sanctions and a spate of natural disasters (WPR).

Inhuman excesses
Human rights are of course at a premium in such a doctrinaire totalitarian state, but Kim’s excesses and violations again can be viewed as part of “the rational and predictable politics” which are standard in authoritarian dictatorships such as the DPRK (Habib). Social control under KJU has a distinctly Orwellian tinge with the Songbun system which herds citizens into three distinct “socio-political” classes – ‘loyal’, ‘wavering’ and ‘hostile’ (HRW).

Juche Torch, Pyongyang

🇰🇵 Endnote: ‘Juche’ – Official state ideology
The “Hermit Kingdom” endorses a philosophy of Juche, devised by Kim Il-sung. Roughly translated as “self-reliance”, by which the regime means that the Korean masses acting as the masters of their own destiny make it possible for the nation to become self-reliant and strong and thus attain true socialism (‘Juche Idea: Answers to Hundred Questions’).


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➊ peering over the border into Kim Jong-un-World, even from the excellent high vantage point of Hushan Great Wall, didn’t disclose much evidence of human habitation. I saw kilometres and kilometres of not unattractive empty fields and meadows, lots of green countryside but no people to speak of. The DPRK’s population of 25 million must be somewhere over there but clearly not on this borderland of the country
➋ since the 1990s Songun “military first” (over other elements of society) had been a key ideological tenet of the regime
➌ leaving aside the possibility of Kim miscalculating his hand or overreaching himself internationally with his policy of aggressive regional brinkmanship
➍ we might add “and ideological”

   

Bibliography
‘The dangerous enigma that is Kim Jong-un’, (Felix Patrikeeff), InDaily, 08-Jan-2016, www.indaily.com.au
‘5 assumptions we make about North Korea — and why they’re wrong’, (Benjamin Habib), Nest, (2017?), www.latrobe.edu.au
‘North Korea’s Power Structure’, (Eleanor Albert), Council on Foreign Relations, 17-Jun-2020, www.cfr.org
‘North Korea Events of 2018’, Human Rights Watch, www.hrw.org
‘North Korea’s Latest show of Strength Masks Its Weaknesses’, WPR, 28-Jan-2021, www.worldpoliticsreview.com

Remembering the “Forgotten War”: The Korean War, 70 Years On

International Relations, Military history, Political geography, Regional History

This week marked the 70th anniversary of the first shots fired in anger of probably the most consequential of the numerous forgotten wars in modern history – the Korean War (25th June 1950).

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Prelude to the conflict
Tensions between the north and south of the Korean Peninsula can be traced back to the 1930s and the Japanese occupation of Korea. Japan’s dominance prompted a resistance movement which included future communist leader and dynasty patriarch of North Korea Kim Il-sung. Some Koreans willingly collaborated with the Japanese invaders including fighting for it against the Korean guerrillas trying to liberate the country (one such agent of the Japanese was a former South Korean president, Park Chung-hee, assassinated in 1979) [‘Collaboration with Japanese hangs over South Korea’, Taipei Times, 08-Mar-2019, www.taipeitimes.com].

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(Photo: Bettman Archive/Getty Images)

At the end of WWII, Korea was divided into two zones of military occupation, north (with Kim as leader under the tutelage of the Soviet Union) and south (under US control but eventually with right-wing strongman Syngman Rhee installed as president), with the demarcation line quite arbitrarily defined at the 38th Parallel (38° N) by two American officers . The leaders of both Koreas held ambitions for reunification of the peninsula but with very different kinds of political outcomes in mind. The US’ withdrawal of almost all its military forces from the South in the late 1940s decided Kim on putting the communist reunification plan into action. With USSR and China agreeing to support it, North Korean forces attacked the South in June 1950. The ensuing three years saw the opposing forces push each other back and forth along the peninsula (the South’s capital Seoul was captured on four separate occasions) resulting in a stalemate.

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Chinese Volunteer Army crossing the Yalu River (Source: www.goodfreephotos.com)

The Korean War was both a Korean civil war and a proxy superpower war militarily pitting the US v Communist China – as well as an early chapter of Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union and America wrestling for influence over strategically-positioned Korea. The response to North Korea’s invasion was a UN-sanctioned “police action” comprising sixteen nations including Britain and Commonwealth countries but led by the US. After initial defeats and a re-consolidation of its position, the US army drove the North Korean forces back into the northern border with China—at one point the US army captured and held the communists’ capital Pyongyang for eight weeks—this prompted China to enter the conflict with a massive manpower commitment, throwing over 250,000 troops against the Americans and allies and forcing them back deep into South Korea [‘The US Army once ruled Pyongyang and 5 other things you might not know about the Korean War’, (Brad Lendon), CNN, 24-Jun-2020, www.amp.cnn.com].

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MiG-15 fighter: the Korean War saw the first appearance of  jet vs jet ‘dogfights’—American F-80s & F-86s fought Russian MiG-15s (manned, first by Russian, and later Chinese and North Korean pilots) with aerial combat taking place in a section of North Korea and the Yalu River that became known as “MiG Alley”

A heavy toll including civilians and MIAs
All together, somewhere between three and four million people died in the conflict. The US army lost nearly 37,000, the South Koreans nearly 138,000. The North Koreans lost up to 400,000 soldiers and the Chinese forces, over 180,000. The MIA tally (missing in action) was very high, over 300,000 from both sides combined. The toll on the civilian population was greatest – the US military unleashed a relentless bombing campaign on North Korea resulting in excess of 280,000 casualties. Virtually all of the modern buildings in North Korea were levelled by the 635,000 tons of US bombs dropped (Lendon).

Picasso’s ‘Massacre in Korea’ (1951)

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A Cold Warrior blueprint from the Pentagon
The US’ involvement in Korea was a key plank in the overall strategy of containing communism in Asia – known in the Pentagon as “Forward Defence”. With the postwar map of Eastern Europe encompassed within the Soviet empire and China under communist rule, Washington saw intervention in the peninsula as fundamental and essential to prevent South Korea from becoming another fallen ‘domino’ to communist infiltration of Eurasia…the same logic that held sway a decade later when America stumbled into an infinitely harder regional conflict to disentangle itself from in Vietnam.

A “limited war”
Mindful of the risk that the Korean War might escalate into a wider Asia conflict or even into “World War III”, US president, Harry S Truman, ordered the US military not to extend it’s aircraft raids into Manchuria and Chinese territory, even though the Chinese were using its north-east provinces to amass its forces to enter the Korean war-zone. This also ruled out using atomic weapons in the conflict, Washington’s reticence to do this was sharpened by awareness of the Soviet Union’s recent demonstration of its own nuclear weapons capability [’Never Truly Forgotten: The Lethal Legacy of the Korean War’, (Rebecca Lissner), War on the Rocks, 25-Jun-2020, www.warontherocks.com].

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Korea’s Cold War reverberations for America 
An armistice in 1953 brought an end to the hostilities on the peninsula but left the issue unresolved. A demilitarised zone (DMZ) was set up between the two Koreas – a ‘contained’ hotspot which threatens periodically to spill over and reignite hostilities. The conflict in Korea prompted a radical transformation in US defence thinking. To secure its regional forward defence perimeters the US in the early Fifties forged defence alliances with the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. And with this came a diverse mushrooming of US overseas military postings and bases in the Asia-Pacific region. Most significantly, the war reversed an earlier contraction of US defence spending, by 1951 it’s spending skyrocketed to $48.2 Bn, setting a pattern for future US military expenditure, including a large standing army in peacetime and an increasingly-funded CIA which expanded its surveillance activities across the globe (Lissner; Cummings).

a US M-24 tank crew, Nakdong River, 1950

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Out of sight …
Why was the Korean War consigned to history’s back pages so swiftly? Timing is part of the answer. WWII ended less than five years earlier, it was still fresh in people’s minds and they had had enough of war. The Korean War, when it came, was an unpleasant reminder of that world-shattering, traumatic episode [Eric McGeer, quoted in Toronto Sun, 21-Jun-2020]. Korea was “overshadowed by the global conflagration that preceded it and the nation-rending counter-insurgency campaign in Vietnam that followed it” (Lissner). But the Korean War’s unresolved conclusion has “kept it alive as a major influence on Asian affairs” [Shiela Miyoshi Jager, “5 US Wars Rarely Found in History Books’, ( Jessica Pearce Rotondi), History, 11-May-2020, www.history.com]. Since the ceasefire in 1953 the peninsula has remained a potential world hotspot, a state of tension persisting to the present thanks largely to the periodical bellicose threats of North Korea’s communist dictator Kim Jong-un to use nuclear warfare against South Korea and the US.

End-note: Perpetual state of war

Though hostilities ceased on July 27, 1953, technically the Korean War has never ended as no peace treaty between the combatants was ever signed.

PostScript: A reprieve for Taiwan 🇹🇼 
The outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula presaged a change of fate for Taiwan. In 1949, Mao Zedong, having emerged triumphant from the Chinese Civil War against Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT, had amassed a force of troops on the mainland ready to invade and “take back” Taiwan. Korea turned that seeming fait accompli on its head! With fighting starting, Truman, fearful of the war spreading across east Asia, positioned the US 7th Fleet in the Taiwan Strait. Stymied, Peking jettisoned its plans to invade Taiwan and relocated the formation of soldiers to the Korean front (Lendon).

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during the three years of direct US military administration of South Korea to 1948, the US injudiciously misread the political situation and employed despised Korean officers of the former Japanese colonial police to impose security – leading to an open revolt in the country (Cumings).
although the conventional view is that Pyongyang was the aggressor and initiated the fighting by invading the South, some observers have noted that in earlier encounters on the border in 1949, South Korea arguably initiated the bulk of the fighting (Cumings)

 

Two Antithetical Approaches to the COVID-19 Crisis: A Controversial Outlier Versus a Low-key Over-achiever

Comparative politics, Politics, Popular Culture, Public health,, Society & Culture

When a novel virus comes along, such as we are facing now, there is no medical vade mecum, no universal guidebook to follow, no one proven route to safely navigate the crisis. Governments weigh up the choices, then in consultation with medical experts, decide on a strategy and do modelling on how to chart the optimal course through the unpredictable straits of COVID-19. Local factors in each country, the conditions, the capacity to respond, the culture, all shape what direction the fight against the virus takes.

The following focuses on just two of the 212 countries and territories which have reported cases of the novel coronavirus disease. The two countries, Sweden and Vietnam, have very different societies, cultures and political systems. Each has followed its own distinct strategy and have produced results that are polarities apart from each other.
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🇸🇪 Sweden
One thing you can’t accuse the home of ABBA and Ingmar Bergman of is sheepishly following the flock. While countries like the US and the UK ‘sleepwalked’ for precious weeks at the start of the crisis, Sweden went out on a limb. From the get-go, Sweden identified itself as an outlier, a contrarian country in the coronavirus war. It adopted a particular course and implemented it. Or to put it another way, Sweden opted for a “change very little”,  “wait and see” position, which amounts in effect to the pursuit of a “herd (or community) immunity” approach. Put simply it means you intentionally expose as many people as possible in the community to infection and so (the theory goes) the majority become immune to the virus. It’s effectiveness hinges on (quickly) minimising the number of high-risk people overall. For it to work, there needs to be an infection rate of at least 60%. Critics of herd immunity, and there are many in both the medical and non-medical world, describe it, among other things, as a “let it rip” strategy.

Getting back to Sweden’s experience, the Social Democrat government under Stefan Lofven, and state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, were at the outset confident of success with a “let it happen ASAP” approach. Sweden stopped organised sporting fixtures and closed university buildings but it eschewed a strategy of mandatory lockdowns (restaurants, bars, cafes and schools for pupils under 16 all stayed open) for a libertarian-like “principle of responsibility”, trusting the Swedish populace to “behave like adults” and do the right thing voluntarily.

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The figures tell a different and disconcerting story: Sweden with a population of just 10.33 million has a reported Covid death toll of 3,225 (as at 10-May-2020) – with capital Stockholm overwhelmingly the primary hotspot. As illustrated below, compared to it’s Nordic neighbours Sweden’s mortality figures resonate like a distress beacon in the ocean, and in per capita terms it even outstrips the horrendous, spiralling toll of the US.

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The mortality rate for Sweden has prompted even the Swedish chief medical scientist Dr Tegnell to comment that it is now a “horrifying large number” [‘Sweden’s near “horrifying” death toll of 3,000 from coronavirus with 87 new fatalities, including a child under ten’, (Ross Ibbotson), Daily Mail (UK), 07-May-2020, www.dailymail.co.uk]. The body responsible, the Swedish Public Health Agency has come under mounting pressure (increasingly internal) for the current situation. A group of 22 scientific researchers from Swedish universities and institutes have called on the SPHA for a rethink of the strategy and a more cautious approach [‘Sweden: 22 Scientists Say Coronavirus Strategy Has Failed’, (David Nikel), Forbes, 14-Apr-2020, www.forbes.com].

A consequence of “granny-killer metrics”  
A leading molecular virologist from Sweden’s Karolinska Insitutet has accused the government of taking unnecessary risks and sacrificing the elderly (half of the total deaths are from aged care homes), as well as placing the health of their carers and hospital workers in jeopardy [‘Sweden urged to reconsider controversial coronavirus advice as infections rise sharply’, (John Varga), Express, 07-May-2020, www.express.co.uk].

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A Stockholm bar: elbow distancing only

Defending the hard to defend
The Swedish authorities have tried to defend its strategy—citing dramatic drops in the use of public transport and a survey which the agencies conclude is evidence that people are practicing safe distancing from each other during the crisis (Ibbotson)—unfortunately the visual evidence from photos and videos within Sweden suggests otherwise with crowded restaurants, bars and parks still the norm and few people seeming to be social distancing. So far, the government for the most part is holding the line and appears to be committed to the long haul, although they have now given some ground, banning outdoor gatherings of more than 50 (Nikel).

There are some outside observers who still take a sanguine view of outlier Sweden’s methods of dealing with the crisis. Stanford School of Medicine (US) professor, Michael Levitt, has been critical of other countries with a different approach, the so-called “first mover” countries like Australia, Austria, New Zealand, Denmark, Czech Republic, Israel and Greece, who he says have paid too heavy a price for locking down their communities – resulting in severe damage to their economies, social upheaval, the loss of an academic year for students, and still having not attained herd immunity [‘Granny-killer metrics don’t add up in Australia’s costly coronavirus battle’, (Andrew Probyn), ABC News, 08-May-2020, www.abcnews.com.au]. No doubt the decision-makers in Sweden would find this external support comforting, and of course Sweden could turn around and say to the growing number of doubters that it’s approach is keeping people in jobs, keeping businesses from closing down, and the economy afloat … but at what a human cost! This is the Solomonic trade-off.

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(Source: www.irishtimes.com)

Update since originally published(information updated to 21-May-2020) SWEDEN has overtaken the UK, Italy and Belgium to record the highest coronavirus per capita death rate in the world. Sweden has recorded 6.08 deaths per million inhabitants, higher than the UK, USA and Italy (www.express.co.uk/).

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🇻🇳 Vietnam
With international media attention on the COVID-19 dilemma focused largely on the US and the Eurocentric world, the efforts of Vietnam in the war against coronavirus has garnered little notice till recently. Many observers would be surprised to discover that the South-East Asian country has had zero recorded deaths from the virus, out of a total of 288 confirmed cases (10-May-2020). Surprising…for a few reasons. First, it seems a bona fide claim, unlike some of it’s S.E. Asian neighbours who claim also to have done well with little to substantiate it. As a general rule, S.E. Asian numbers, even more so African numbers, are often problematic as there has been an inadequate amount of testing carried out to gauge progress accurately.

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(Photo: AP)

Second, Vietnam shares a (northern) border with China, the country of coronavirus origin, plus in normal times Vietnam is a busy destination with frequent international flights from nearby Taiwan, Hong Kong and China itself, leaving it, one would think, quite susceptible to to the importation of the infection. Third, Vietnam has an estimated 97 million people but for a medical emergency of this magnitude it lacks the allocatable resources and health infrastructure of the more economically dynamic Asian states. It simply can’t afford to engage in the level of mass testing that say South Korea has managed [‘Vietnam shows how you can contain COVID-19 with limited resources’, (Sean Fleming), World Economic Forum, 30-Mar-2020, www.weforum.org].

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Why has Vietnam done so well in the war against the “invisible enemy”?
Part of the explanation is that Vietnam has approached the crisis very much like a military campaign. In fact war rhetoric has been employed by the government, which constantly speaks of “fighting the enemy”.  The country’s response was early and proactive, border closures, rigorous mass quarantines of whole towns for weeks, were implemented up front, not just as a last resort like some places elsewhere [‘How Vietnam is winning its “war” on coronavirus’, (Rodion Ebbighausen), DW, 16-Apr-2020, www.dw.com]. The authorities conducted targeted testing and thorough contact-tracing procedures. To compensate for the country’s limited resources they created low-cost test kits for wide distribution (“70-minute rapid test kits”).

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“Rice ATMs” initiative: Made available 24/7 to Vietnamese people during the time of pandemic  
(Photo:
www.vietnamnet.vn)

An ingrained culture of compliance 
The key to what Vietnam has achieved is the central government’s ability to secure almost universal integration into the fight against the disease. Communist Vietnam’s authoritarian one-party state structure with a highly organised army and security apparatus makes this task more easily obtainable (whereas in a liberal society where plurality is the norm this would be nigh on impossible). The regime can much more easily mobilise the people to adhere to it’s rules and restrictions…there is a prevailing culture of compliance, and a range of effective mechanisms in the hands of Hanoi to attain that compliance. The government-controlled media and the high numbers of Vietnamese people exposed  to social media have facilitated this. Apps have been a standard part of the public information campaign to get the government message out –  and the degree of transparency about COVID-19 and the government’s plan to counter-attack it, has raised public confidence and made it more receptive to what Hanoi is saying   [‘The Secret to Vietnam’s COVID-19 Response Success’, (Minh Vu & Bich T Tran), The Diplomat, 18-Apr-2020, www.thediplomat.com].

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The government has called on a raft of idiosyncratically-Vietnamese cultural devices to creatively drive home it’s theme. ”Viral hand-washing” songs have been popularised among the people and most effectively, the regime have resorted to propaganda art, something with a long tradition in communist Vietnam. Calling on the familiar slogan, “In war, we draw” (again, invoking the war metaphor), the government has fostered a patriotic response in Vietnamese to get 100% behind the war on the virus (#TogetherWeWillWin), resulting in the production and dissemination of visually-powerful and meaningful posters like these two (above and below). COVID-19 has also prompted the release of special stamps to help unify the Vietnamese people [‘“In a war, we draw”: Vietnam’s artists joint fight against Covid-19’, (Chris Humphrey), The Guardian, 09-Apr-2020, www.theguardian.com; Fleming].

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Coercion and collaboration
Another side of Vietnam’s use of “soft power” to get everyone thinking as one can be seen at work in the coronavirus emergency. The socialist ethos in Vietnam operates on one level as a “surveillance state“…ordinary Vietnamese are conditioned, not just to obey rules, but to help the authoritarian regime’s realisation of it’s goals by spying on neighbours and reporting back to the authorities the activities of non-conformists or of anyone breaching the public health regulations (Humphrey).

Notwithstanding this further encroachment on civil liberties, the Vietnamese people as a whole, having accepted the seriousness of Hanoi’s fight against coronavirus, are on board, and appear genuinely proud of their country’s success in avoiding thus far any serious outbreak of the epidemic in a country with a healthcare system woefully ill-equipped to deal with harmful effects on it’s large population (Ebbighausen).

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The Vietnamese achievement, having been successful so far in keeping a lid on the epidemic, might lead it’s citizens to feel or at least hope that they are out of the woods. But even if they are in the clearing now, there’s another forest looming largely in the shape of the economy, which of course is another matter entirely. Over 85% of Vietnam’s enterprises have been adversely effected by the crisis. Tourism, which Vietnam like so many is highly dependent on,  could be looking at a loss of $US3 to $US4 Bn in 2020, and so on down the line of the country’s businesses. At the moment business leaders in Vietnam are preoccupied with exploring new economic opportunity that may arise for the country post-crisis [‘Vietnam is set to lose billions due to coronavirus, and it’s already feeling the impact of the deadly outbreak’, (Kate Taylor), Business Insider Australia, 25-Feb-2020, www.businessinsider.com.au].


EndNotePeering inside that can of worms
The UK Johnson government initially toyed with the idea of going the herd immunity route, before being awakened to it’s senses by a vociferous chorus of British medical experts recounting the dire ramifications of such a gamble. After chief epidemiologist Prof Neil Ferguson did some remodelling, the UK government (belatedly) switched to a suppression approach. The Netherlands in March announced it would follow Sweden’s strategy but the Dutch prime minister then walked back the herd immunity line, opting instead for what has been described as “lockdown light” [‘Caught Between Herd Immunity And National Lockdown, The Netherlands Hard Hit Bt Covid-19 (Update)’, (Joshua Cohen), Forbes, 27-Mar-2020, www.forbes.com]

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 the medical critics would be quick to point out that, if herd immunity can’t be accomplished by vaccination (and there is no vaccine for coronavirus yet, not even on the horizon), then it is an extremely risky business to dabble in. It puts the old and vulnerable into the position of sacrificial pawns for the greater good; it can also expose a country’s health-care system to intolerable demands on its resources (not to neglect the heightened personal danger for nursing staff and medics); a third drawback with the approach is that mortality from coronavirus is a reality for the under 70s and under 60s as well
 in an implicit admission of a failure of it’s voluntary compliance arrangements, Sweden announced recently that it would close bars and restaurants which flaunted the social distancing guidelines [‘Sweden is shutting down bars and restaurants where people defied social distancing guidelines’, (Kelly McLaughlin), Business Insider, 28-Apr-2020, www.businessinsider.com]
like Myanmar for instance which admits to only six deaths from the virus. A population of 55 million, according to a World Bank estimate it has only 249 ventilators in the whole country. The Myanmar regime’s lack of transparency, the sheer logistics of trying to safely social distances and the attribution of it’s very low fatality level to the country’s diet and lifestyle, cast more than reasonable doubts on the true extent of the epidemic in the republic [‘Zara’s Billionaire Owner Was Praised For Helping in the Coronavirus Crisis. Workers In Myanmar Paid the Price’, (Nishita Jha), BuzzFeed News, 07-May-2020, www.buzzfeed.com]