NORTH Korea has spent up to US$650 million (RM2.8 billion) on missile tests this year – enough to vaccinate its entire population against Covid-19, said a government-affiliated think tank in South Korea today.

Pyongyang has conducted 18 weapons tests this year – a new high – and continues to launch missiles even after confirming its first coronavirus infections in May, with more than four million cases of what authorities term “fever” reported.

Kim Jong-un’s regime spent an estimated US$400 million to US$650 million on developing and testing the 33 missiles it fired this year, according to a Korea Institute for Defence Analyses report.

The money would “have made it possible to make up for the food shortage this year, or provide a single dose of Covid-19 vaccination for all North Koreans”, it added.

North Korea struggles with chronic food shortages, exacerbated by a years-long self-imposed coronavirus blockade coupled with biting international sanctions over its weapons programmes.

Despite state media reports claiming Covid-19 is under control, the World Health Organisation (WHO) last week warned that it “assumes that the situation is getting worse, not better”.

Experts said the outbreak can trigger a major health crisis in the country, which has one of the worst healthcare systems in the world.

North Korea reported its first Omicron cases on May 12, and the virus has since torn through its unvaccinated population of 25 million, with state media confirming more than 4.3 million cases of “fever” in total today.

“As required by the maximum emergency anti-epidemic system, we demand all staff strictly abide by anti-pandemic rules and regulations,” said sanitation official Kim Hye-kyong today, as hazmat-clad workers sprayed down trolley buses.

Pyongyang repeatedly rejected offers of Covid-19 vaccines, including from WHO, early in the pandemic, and has ignored new offers of medical assistance and jabs from Seoul and Washington more recently.

Its state media, which typically reports on successful weapons tests 24 hours later, has not reported on any of the recent missile launches in the country.

This means that most North Koreans will know very little “about how many resources their government has been blasting into the sea”, said Sokeel Park, South Korea country director at Liberty in North Korea, on Twitter.

North Koreans have been kept in the dark about military spending even as they deal “with the pandemic, shortages from two years of lockdown and skyrocketing medicine prices”, he added.

South Korean and United States officials have for weeks been warning that Kim’s regime is preparing to carry out a fresh nuclear test.

US deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman on Tuesday said there will be a “forceful and swift” response if Pyongyang goes ahead with its seventh nuclear test. – AFP, June 9, 2022.