BY official accounts, the pig contagion wreaking havoc across Eastern Asia has virtually skipped over North Korea, with a single outbreak reported there in May. But wayward feral pigs have stoked concern that Kim Jong Un’s reclusive state is hiding an African swine fever disaster.
Three wild boars were found dead in border areas separating the two countries earlier this month before being tested positive for the viral hemorrhagic disease, officials in South Korea said. The finding reflects the freedom with which animals roam the 4-kilometer (2.5 mile) wide buffer zone that divides the nations, and creates an involuntary park and refuge for fauna.
It also hints at a spillover of the deadly virus from North Korea, where unofficial reports indicate the disease is spreading out of control. South Korea has deployed helicopters to disinfect parts of the 250-kilometer-long border-barrier, near which more than a dozen outbreaks have occurred on farms since the virus was first reported there a month ago.
African swine fever has spread to almost all areas of North Korea, and pigs in the western province of North Pyongan have been “wiped out,” said Lee Hye-hoon, who chairs the National Assembly’s intelligence committee, citing South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.
The virus killed 22 hogs in May on a cooperative farm about 260 kilometers north of Pyongyang, near the border with China, North Korea’s agriculture ministry said in a May 30 report to the World Organization for Animal Health, or OIE.
But since then, there have been no follow-up reports to the Paris-based veterinary body, and scant coverage of the event in state media.
UN delegate
The Food and Agriculture Organization has no information beyond the report received by the OIE, said Wantanee Kalpravidh, the United Nations agency’s Bangkok-based regional manager of the Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases. The FAO is awaiting approval to send a delegate to North Korea, she said in a text message on Friday.
Widespread transmission of African swine fever, which isn’t known to harm humans but kills most pigs in a week, may put North Korea’s food security in graver jeopardy.