...SEOUL- North Korea's not saying a word about deaths or illnesses from the coronavirus, but the disease reportedly has spread across the border from China and is taking a toll in a country with a dismal health care system and scant resources for fighting off the deadly bug.

...Among the first to report fatalities in North Korea, the Seoul-based website Daily NK said five people had died in the critical northwestern city of Sinuiju, on the Yalu River across road and rail bridges from Dandong, which is the largest Chinese city in the region and a key point for commerce with North Korea despite sanctions.

...Daily NK, which relies on sources inside North Korea that send reports via Chinese mobile phone networks to contacts in China, said authorities had "ordered public health officials in Sinuiju to quickly dispose of the bodies and keep the deaths secret from the public."

..."The regime's relative isolation from the international community hinders the widespread penetration of many diseases from abroad," they wrote, but "the porous nature of the border with China and frequent travel is a clear vector for the virus' transmission." Thus, "If there are reports of the virus inside of North Korea, we should expect that the virus would spread rapidly given the state's inability to contain a pandemic."

...By now, it may be too late for North Korea to stamp out all signs of the disease.

..."The infections most likely spread through porous parts of the border with China that see plenty of smuggling and other clandestine traffic," said the paper, reporting suspected cases among those "engaged in smuggling between the North and China."

..."Bottom line," said Steve Tharp, who's been analyzing North Korean affairs as both an army officer and civilian expert for many years here, "the coronavirus has tightened up sanctions enforcement more than any other measure over the years because the North Koreans are actually self-enforcing the sanctions, against their will, through the tight closing of their borders in order to save the regime from being wiped out by this human pandemic coming."

...North Korean leaders, said Tharp, "understand very well that this pandemic would rip through their population and be much more dangerous in North Korea than other places because of their inadequate medical infrastructure and the low resistance disease of the general population after so many years of surviving under near-starvation conditions."