North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his family have been provided with an experimental coronavirus vaccine, a US analyst said on Tuesday, citing two unidentified Japanese intelligence sources.
Harry Kazianis, a North Korea expert at the Centre for the National Interest think tank in Washington, said it was unclear which company had supplied its drug candidate to the Kims and whether it had proven to be safe.
The vaccine has been administered to the Kims and several senior North Korean officials. “Kim Jong Un and multiple other high-ranking officials within the Kim family and leadership network have been vaccinated for coronavirus within the last two to three weeks thanks to a vaccine candidate supplied by the Chinese government,” Kazianis wrote in an article for online outlet 19FortyFive.
At least three Chinese companies including Sinovac Biotech Ltd, CanSinoBio and Sinopharm Group were developing a coronavirus. None of these companies, however, had publicly launched Phase 3 Clinical trials of their experimental vaccine.
Experts had said they doubted whether Kim would use an experimental vaccine. “Even if a Chinese vaccine had already been approved, no drug is perfect and he would not take that risk when he has numerous shelters which can ensure almost complete isolation,” said Choi Jung-hun, an infectious disease expert who defected from North Korea to the South in 2012 told Reuters.
Sinopharm says one million people in China have used its candidate vaccine. Last month, two North Korean hacking groups tried to break into the network of vaccine developers in multiple countries including British drugmaker AstraZeneca, Microsoft said.