A man has died in North Korea because he violated Covid-19 quarantine rules.
The unidentified man’s public execution was a tactic used to scare other citizens to comply with the totalitarian nation’s coronavirus lockdown measures. The man was accused of smuggling along with his Chinese business partners by the firing squad, Radio Free Asia reported.
North Korea is bordered for 880 miles by China, where the root of the virus was formed, but North Korea says it’s virus-free. Still, they have placed strict measures to keep it this way by locking down cities and counties, as well as banning travel between provinces.
But smugglers who still need to make a living have been transporting goods from China to the nation. As a result, last month, stricter measures were set to prevent smugglers from doing so. North Korea officials place land minds along borders and anti-aircraft units.
“Since the end of November, the Central Committee [of the Korean Workers’ Party] have ratcheted up the existing emergency quarantine measures to ‘ultra-high-level’ emergency quarantine measures,” a resident of North Pyongan province told the news outlet.
“The public execution happened because the victim was charged with violating quarantine right before the ultra-high-level emergency measures took effect around November 20th. A man in his 50s who tried to smuggle with Chinese business partners was shot as an example on November 28th,” the source added.
“While guarding the border seamlessly from the ground, in the air, and at sea, authorities ordered soldiers to shoot anyone approaching the border unconditionally, regardless of who the person is or their reason for being in the area. It is an absolute threat to the border area residents,” a second source said.
Sadly, the public execution is nothing new, in fact, the second source says it’s a typical way of the nation to care people into compliance.
