Report: China Offers Experimental New Coronavirus Vaccine to Kim Jong-un and His Family

A U.S. analyst said Tuesday (Dec. 1) that China has provided North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his family with an experimental new coronavirus vaccine, Reuters reported from Seoul, citing two anonymous sources in Japanese intelligence circles.

Harry Kazianis, an expert on North Korean affairs at the Center for the National Interest, a Washington think tank, said Kim Jong-un and several senior North Korean officials have already been vaccinated.

He added that it is not clear which company provided the vaccine to Kim Jong-un or whether it has been proven effective.

Writing on the website 1945 (19FortyFive), Kazianis wrote: “Kim Jong-un and several other senior officials within the Kim family and in leadership circles have been vaccinated in the past two to three weeks with the new coronavirus vaccine, a candidate vaccine provided by the Chinese government.”

He cited U.S. medical scientist Peter J. Hotez, who said at least three Chinese companies are developing new coronavirus vaccines, including Sinovac Biotech Ltd, CanSinoBio and Sinophram Group.

Sinophram says its vaccine candidate has been used by nearly 1 million people in China, but it is not known if any of the three companies have publicly initiated Phase 3 clinical trials of their experimental neo-coronavirus vaccines.

North Korea has not confirmed any cases of neo-coronavirus infection, but South Korea’s National Intelligence Service has said that the possibility cannot be ruled out because North Korea traded and traveled with China, the source of the outbreak, before closing its borders in late January.

Microsoft said last month that two North Korean hacking groups had tried to break into the networks of vaccine developers in several countries, but Microsoft did not say which companies were targeted. The companies included British drugmaker AstraZeneca, the sources told Reuters.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said last week that it had thwarted a North Korean hacking attempt against South Korea’s maker of the new coronavirus vaccine.