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Comment by mirekrusin | Hacker News Reader

Uh, just looked at map and Pyongyang/North Korea is holding great on stats - zero infections. Does anyone know if it's becase a) almost nobody travels there, or b) there's no outgoing information or both?

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I've heard that their border with China is pretty porous and that people cross it on a daily basis to get contraband into the country.

So I'd say b) is most likely. People are criticizing China's release of information but compared to NK, they're pretty transparent.

Even if the situation on the ground was disastrous, I'd bet that the government would do everything to hide it.

I saw a couple of articles written in Korean - those stated, in North Korea, there are only limited people, in a novel class, are able to travel outside the country. Also, unbelievable point was, North Korean government executed one inspected person immediately after finding out.

Two people were executed. One for smuggling(The regime was figuring out how he had contracted the virus after NK barred Chinese people from entering the country and they found out that he was meeting Chinese smugglers), and the other for breaking quarantine and going to a public bath.

It is also c) they may not have testing kits or may not be using what WHO sent to various countries.

I'm guessing a combination of information blackout, and lack of testing equipment. Where are the world's PCR machines located?

It's a totalitarian country with total information control. There could be thousands dead and we'd have no way of knowing.

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