Kim orders Covid lockdown

SEOUL, May 12 (AFP): North Korea confirmed its first-ever Covid cases Thursday and declared a "serious emergency", with leader Kim Jong Un appearing in a mask on television for the first time to order nationwide lockdowns.

Hours after the shock announcement-the first time the nuclear-armed country has ever admitted to a case of Covid-19 -- Seoul's military said it had detected three short-range ballistic missiles fired from near Pyongyang.

The launch, one of more than a dozen sanctions-busting weapons tests so far this year, comes shortly after Washington warned that Kim's regime could test a nuke any day, with satellite images indicating fresh activity at nuclear sites.

Earlier Thursday, North Korea said it had moved into "maximum emergency epidemic prevention system" after patients sick with fever in Pyongyang tested positive for the "Omicron BA.2 variant" of Covid-19.

Kim, wearing a mask on state television for the first time, oversaw an emergency politburo meeting to discuss the outbreak and "called on all the cities and counties of the whole country to thoroughly lock down their areas."

Kim told the meeting that the goal was to "quickly cure the infections in order to eradicate the source of the virus spread," KCNA said, without specifying how many Covid infections had been detected.

North Korea's crumbling health infrastructure would struggle to deal with a major outbreak, with its 25 million people not vaccinated, experts say.

By following its admission of Covid cases with a missile test, North Korea is signalling "coronavirus control and its pursuit of national defence are two separate things," Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies said.

"It is now reasonable to assume it could also conduct a nuclear test with Kim Jong Un's greenlight at any moment," he added.