The United States rolled out one of the fastest and most successful mass vaccination programs in the history of the planet.
Now, U.S. allies crippled by a new surge in infections around the world are begging for some of that serum.
But President Joe Biden and his administration don’t seem to be prioritizing desperate friends including India, Japan, and much of Europe.
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Instead, a new report suggests the Biden administration is looking at sending precious vaccines to a sworn enemy state: North Korea.
Former President Donald Trump famously developed an unlikely rapport with dictator Kim Jong Un. While their detente didn’t deliver any diplomatic breakthroughs, it did lead to a cooling of the nation’s famously over-the-top rhetoric, and a pause in North Korea’s missile program as it sought a larger deal with the United States.
But that changed when Biden took office.
The saber-rattling and a series of missile tests in violation of international law picked up again. And while Biden’s team has tried to reach out to Pyongyang via multiple back channels, Reuters reports they were given the cold shoulder.
“To date, we have not received any response from Pyongyang,” one unnamed official told the news agency in March.
Publicly, Pyongyang has accused Biden of making a “blunder” and warned he will face “a very grave situation” on the Korean peninsula.
Unable to score even the smallest of wins diplomatically, it seems the Biden administration is now trying to use the vaccine as a negotiating tool to coax North Korea back to the table.
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“Vaccine diplomacy is an easy effort to break this impasse because the Biden administration cannot do much about sanctions lifting so they have to look at what incentives to give to North Korea,” Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA Korea analyst, told CNN. “It depends on how desperate North Korea is.”
Others say that Pyongyang will never be desperate enough to accept the vaccines from Biden.
“It would be a great offer but there is no way that Kim Jong Un would ever accept them,” MIT Prof. Vipin Narang told CNN. “There would be paranoia about what would be delivered by the US and there is also the possibility that China could be providing vaccines quietly to North Korean elites.”
Then there’s the other issue: The regime has barely even acknowledged the coronavirus pandemic.
In fact, they claim the COVID-19 infection hasn’t even reached them.
But experts know that’s not true.
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Radio Free Asia has heard reports of thousands of cases and dozens of deaths, numbers even more remarkable given that North Korea is largely closed to much of the rest of the world.
“Even if officially North Korea denies any confirmed cases, we suspect that in more populated border regions where there is illegal trade there are confirmed cases,” Professor Kim Jeong of the University of North Korea Studies, told the DW website.
There’s another sign that the nation is being hit by the virus: North Korean officials sought help from the United Nations COVAX initiative, which sends vaccine to nations in need.
COVAX offered the country 1.7 million doses, but Pyongyang balked when told they’d only get the shots if independent monitors were allowed to enter the country and watch how they are allocated.
That’s to ensure the vaccines don’t simply go to regime cronies (or, given North Korea’s reputation, the ensure they’re not resold on the black market).
Any vaccine offer from Biden would likely come with similar conditions, making it even less likely that North Korea would accept.
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Taken together, it’s a sign that U.S.-North Korea relations could head back toward a level of hostility not seen in years.
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert.