Red Cross trains thousands of N. Koreans to help cope with coronavirus, floods

An employee of the Pyongyang Glasses Shop taking the temperature of visiting customers as quarantine measures of the coronavirus infection in the North Korean capital on Monday (Aug 10). - AFP

SEOUL, Aug 10 (Reuters): The Red Cross has trained 43,000 North Korean volunteers to help communities, including the locked-down city of Kaesong, fight the novel coronavirus and provide flood assistance, an official with the relief organisation said on Monday.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared an emergency last month and imposed a lockdown on Kaesong, near the inter-Korean border, after a man who defected to the South in 2017 returned to the city showing coronavirus symptoms.