NEWS BRIEF

[Anchor Lead]

North Korean state media said Friday that leader Kim Jong-un discussed COVID-19-related emergency state quarantine measures during a politburo meeting of the ruling party's central committee on Thursday. Rodong Sinmun said that Kim warned against complacency and ordered stricter quarantine measures, noting the occurrence of re-infections and a second wave of the outbreak in neighboring countries in recent days. However there was no mention of inter-Korean relations during the meeting.
Chairman Kim Myung-hwan of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, one of the two major umbrella unions in the country, said he will convene a special KCTU delegates meeting soon to ratify a tripartite agreement among labor, management and the government on combating the COVID-19 pandemic, after an earlier attempt to sign the accord collapsed. However, ratification is not expected to be easy as hawkish members of the confederation including one of its strongest factions called the "National Conference" oppose the trilateral agreement.