A defector who served as a senior official in the North Korean government has dismissed Pyongyang's claims that the nation remains free of coronavirus, warning that the virus could kill as many people as the four-year famine of the mid-1990s.

In an interview for the US-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, Kim Myong said around three million people are believed to have died in the "Arduous March" famine, which was a consequence of a series of natural disasters compounded by economic mismanagement and the collapse of the food distribution system.

He warned that Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator, cares little that the nation is on the brink of another humanitarian disaster.

The regime in Pyongyang has repeatedly insisted that there have been no cases of coronavirus in the North, primarily as a result of the government's swift action to halt the spread of the disease, including sealing the border with China.

Mr Myong says such claims are propaganda and that the real number of both infections and fatalities "exceeds imagination".