2020-09-11 Tweet U.S. Gen. Robert Abrams, commander of the United
Nations Command, Combined Forces Command, and
United States Forces Korea, delivers a speech
during the commemorating ceremony for the U.N.
Forces Participating Day in the Korean War at the
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Prepares to Reenter Coronavirus Lockdown Comments (0) HOME | NEWS | NORTH KOREA U.S. Military Chief in Korea
Confirms North Korean Kill Zone
on China Border North Korea has set up a shoot-to-kill zone along its
border with China to prevent citizens from crossing
into China and bringing the coronavirus back with
them should they return, the senior U.S. commander
on the Korean peninsula said this week. Gen. Robert Abrams, commander of the United States
Forces Korea, told an online forum hosted by a
Washington think tank Thursday that North Korea had
taken drastic measures on its border to stop the
COVID-19 pandemic from spreading among its
malnourished population and decrepit healthcare system. “North Korean smugglers have been trying to get
across, and as a result, the regime issued out
instructions. So now they’ve got an additional
buffer zone, 1-2 kilometers up on the Chinese
border,” he said. “They’ve got North Korean SOF [special operations
forces] out there manning these things, strike forces,
they’ve got shoot to kill orders in place, and this is
fundamentally about preventing COVID from getting
into North Korea,” Abrams told the Washington-
based Center for Strategic and International Studies on-line panel. The severe border control policies described by
Abrams, who commands the 28,500 troops based in
South Korea under a longstanding defense treaty, are
nearly identical to accounts shared with RFA’s
Korea Service last month in a series of reports from
North Korean sources along their country’s 1,420- km (880-mile) border with China. On Aug. 26, RFA quoted sources in the North Korean
military as saying that North Korea’s top brass had
that day ordered military and police units to shoot on
sight anyone found within 1,000 meters (0.6 miles) of
the Chinese frontier in the four border provinces of
North Hamgyong, North Pyongan, Chagang and Ryanggang. A build-up of forces to fight the pandemic was also
revealed in earlier RFA reports quoting sources in
Ryanggang province that 1,500 Special Forces
soldiers and border guards had been deployed in four
layers along the Sino-Korean border to prevent illegal
crossings during the pandemic and prevent smuggling by guards. North Korea and China suspended all trade and
closed their border at the beginning of the pandemic
in January. But the frontier had remained porous,
because North Korea’s nascent market economy
depends on the smuggling of goods into and out of
China. Smugglers skirt U.S. and UN sanctions aimed at
depriving Pyongyang of cash and resources that
could be funneled into its nuclear and missile
programs. “With COVID-19, that has accelerated the effect of
sanctions on North Korea,” said Abrams, who called
the harsh border controls by Pyongyang
“understandable” in view of their threadbare
safety net for the population of 25.5 million people. “They have a poor health system, 60 percent of
their population is undernourished, they don’t have
the medical capacity, and a very large outbreak could
be devastating. So they are taking those matters into
their hand,” the general said.

IPOB please your next YAM festival should be in north Korea biko .