NK News exclusively reported Wednesday that North Korean authorities had ordered Pyongyang residents to bunker down for at least five days, after rumors of a pending lockdown drove panic shopping in the capital.

The official notice requires people to remain indoors until midnight Sunday to mitigate against “rising” cases of respiratory illness, though it makes no mention of COVID-19.

Yet two days into the lockdown, North Korean state media has still made no mention of the new restrictions. This contrasts with the DPRK’s first official outbreak of COVID-19 in May 2022, when state media publicly