Correspondents Report - Sunday, 2 December , 2001 8:08 Reporter: Tom O'Byrne HAMISH ROBERTSON: One of the world's most reclusive regimes has been starting to grapple with a health risk it still publicly denies. HIV, the virus that can lead to AIDS, has now spread to North Korea.



International health workers say the North Korean government is trying to learn from neighboring China, a country that only recently itself began discussing the crisis in public.



But as China correspondent Tom O'Byrne reports, North Korea may have been able to keep out western ideas of freedom and democracy, but it's likely to have less success with HIV.



TOM O'BYRNE: Perhaps the clearest signal so far about North Korea's official policy on HIV [Human Immunodeficiency Virus] and AIDS [Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome] has come from one of the United Nations Population Fund's top officials in North Asia, Junko Sasaki.



JUNKO SASAKI: The official statistics, the government say that North Korea is an AIDS free country.



TOM O'BYRNE: But this time Miss Sasaki says there's been a breakthrough. In a deal involving the World Health Organisation and UNICEF [United Nations Childrens Funds], the Population Fund is preparing, with government approval, to raise awareness among health workers about how to advise the most vulnerable groups in the community about preventing HIV and the spread of AIDS.



She says the commitment from Pyongyang may be small but it is significant.



JUNKO SASAKI: Government has been denying there's no cases, so that there's not good statistics, but definitely I think they're increasing awareness. The good thing about it is China because China, about two years ago, they recognised AIDS is a world epidemic problem. North Koreans they travel a lot to here.



That's why we succeeded in developing this AIDS materials. We didn't, you know, produce this project on our own, we worked together with the government. So even though officially, they have to state officially an AIDS free country, but in reality they know that it will be a coming problem.



[Excerpt of Yin Dakui's speech]



TOM O'BYRNE: It was this speech recently in Beijing that health and aid workers say was the turning point in the effort to get HIV and AIDS in China, and its long term political ally, North Korea, discussed publicly.



Yin Dakui is China's Minister for Health. Despite his conservative estimates about the number of those affected in China, Minister Yin took an unprecedented swipe at parts of the bureaucracy for either hiding the AIDS problem or hiding from it.



YIN DAKUI [Translated]: We have not effectively stand the epidemic of AIDS through the drug using and we should further strengthen the management of blood. And also, we have witnessed an increase of those STD patients, year by year.



It is particularly noteworthy that in some particular regions, some leaders and also the general public there have not fully realised the hidden dangers of a large scale epidemic of HIV AIDS as well as the harm it may bring about to the local social development. So the leaders and general public in those places have not attached adequate importance and paid close attention to the issue.



TOM O'BYRNE: But health workers say just like the southern border that separates China from Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, the border that separated China from the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] is increasingly a trouble spot.



The number of sex workers and intravenous drug users reportedly infected with HIV is on the rise and Kaoko Hakkinen [phonetic] from the UN FPA's Pyongyang office says the DPRK government is still in denial about the way the disease might spread.



KAOKO HAKKINEN: The government has some testing points and clinics, but even among the staff, hospital staff, they do not have the awareness and therefore it is very important that we train our hospital staff for presentation.



TOM O'BYRNE: And while North Korea may be learning from China about how to cope with the disease, the latest United Nations report contains a warning that China itself faces a generalised epidemic far bigger and wider than the government is prepared to admit.



Last year's official figures stated 600,000 Chinese are infected. The UN maintains that's now past the one million mark. With half of China's provinces either experiencing a serious local HIV epidemic or on the brink of one.



The North Koreans will be hoping their long period of isolation from the outside world might prove a blessing in disguise.