Almost 200 North Korean soldiers have reportedly died from coronavirus, thousands more in quarantine

[soryang]

6. Actually the original article says suspected cases.

re: 북한군도 ‘발칵’…코로나19 의심 사망 200명 육박 By 정태주 기자 -2020.03.06 4:56 오후 NK News 3.6

Which is kind of odd. If they have a covert source inside the North Korean military, the person would be risking their life and that of their family and relatives to report this. So why beat around the bush? Is it an intentional leak? Kim sent a friendly letter to Pres. Moon, a few days back, expressing sympathy concerning the S.Korean covid 19 situation. Are they looking for medical aid?

One possible explanation would be that they had no access to covid 19 test kits. The Russians reported giving them 1500 test kits on February 26 maybe too late to affect this situation. The article suggested strategic rocket forces might be affected along with the other services. The longer ranged ballistic missile forces are in this "belt."

This is a good article in Science magazine that refers to difficulties the nation wide quarantine is having on importation of TB supplies. There is a wide spread TB problem according to the author, with "thousands" of cases. There is a reference to service personnel in the NKnews article above concerning a history of disease or impaired immune system.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/coronavirus-disruptions-could-hurt-north-korea-s-efforts-treat-tuberculosis

The geographic distribution of the alleged deaths approaching 200 is in the frontier provinces along the North Korean border with China, where one might expect the problem to occur. This is consistent with their earlier article that i posted, except Pyongyang where 7 deaths were reported and South Hwanghae where Haeju is located, (close to S.Korea on the West Sea) isn't mentioned at all. There were reportedly 2 dead in Hwanghae in the earlier report. The earlier NKnews report seems to come from a different source and was referenced near the end in the current article which is the source for the OP. ( 중앙 비상방역지휘부 )

https://www.democraticunderground.com/113326682

So this new NKnews report is at least consistent with the earlier report to some extent except for the failure to report on the southern areas I described. I think this is massaged to conceal the sources.