{"id":37532,"date":"2021-10-01T09:58:17","date_gmt":"2021-10-01T00:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/oct\/01\/john-key-calling-new-zealands-covid-response-north-korean-feeds-the-lockdown-deniers"},"modified":"2021-10-01T09:58:17","modified_gmt":"2021-10-01T00:58:17","slug":"john-key-calling-new-zealands-covid-response-north-korean-isnt-just-lazy-rhetoric-its-wrong-brian-ng","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=37532","title":{"rendered":"John Key calling New Zealand\u2019s Covid response \u2018North Korean\u2019 isn\u2019t just lazy rhetoric, it\u2019s wrong | Brian Ng"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Irresponsible statements are fuel for those who falsely believe their rights have been taken away<\/p>\n<p>When former prime minister <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/key-john\">John Key<\/a> referred to New Zealand as a \u201csmug hermit kingdom\u201d in his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.stuff.co.nz\/national\/politics\/opinion\/300414808\/sir-john-key-we-need-to-break-free-of-the-hermit-kingdom-and-stop-ruling-by-fear-on-covid19\">widely disseminated op-ed<\/a>, I thought it was pushing it a bit, but not completely off the mark \u2013 we closed our borders to outsiders, after all. What I didn\u2019t expect was for him to start calling the government\u2019s response \u201cNorth Korean\u201d. This isn\u2019t just lazy rhetoric, it\u2019s obviously wrong.<\/p>\n<p>This is what North Korea\u2019s been through: it closed its borders at the beginning of 2020, before most of the world put itself into lockdown. It stopped all shipments in and out of the country, including China, which is its largest trading partner and aid donor. Fishing in its surrounding waters and even salt harvesting was halted, for fear Covid may be transmitted that way. Foreign <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/apr\/01\/foreign-diplomat-collective-exit-from-north-korea-russian-embassy-staff-strict-covid-restrictions\">diplomatic staff left<\/a> on one-way tickets: one group of Russians took a hand-powered rail cart out of the country.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/oct\/01\/john-key-calling-new-zealands-covid-response-north-korean-feeds-the-lockdown-deniers\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Irresponsible statements are fuel for those who falsely believe their rights have been taken awayWhen former prime minister John Key referred to New Zealand as a \u201csmug hermit kingdom\u201d in his widely disseminated op-ed, I thought it was pushing it a bit,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2436,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,1066,268,394,56,933,40,565],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-coronavirus","category-jacinda-ardern","category-john-key","category-new-zealand","category-new-zealand-politics","category-north-korea","category-vaccines-and-immunisation"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2436"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37533,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37532\/revisions\/37533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}