At 9:30 a.m. every day this week, a soft-spoken official has appeared on North Korean television to report the number of people with fever and new deaths, and to explain measures to stop North Korea's first confirmed COVID-19 outbreak.
The little-known official, Ryu Yong Chol, has become the public face of the isolated country's battle against the epidemic, the equivalent of U.S. COVID-19 czar Dr Anthony Fauci or the director of South Korea's disease prevention agency, Jeong Eun-kyeong.
