Seoul, South Korea –
North Korea suggested on Friday that its COVID-19 outbreak began in people who had contact with balloons flown from South Korea, a highly questionable claim that appeared to be an attempt to hold its rival accountable amid rising tensions.
For years, activists have flown balloons across the border to distribute hundreds of thousands of propaganda leaflets critical of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and North Korea has often expressed anger at activists and North Korean leaders. South for not stopping them.
World health authorities say the coronavirus is spread by close contacts who inhale airborne droplets and is more likely to occur in closed, poorly ventilated spaces than outdoors. South Korea’s Unification Ministry said there was no chance South Korean balloons had spread the virus to North Korea.
Ties between the Koreas remain strained amid a prolonged deadlock in US-led diplomacy to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions in exchange for economic and political gains.
The state media report said North Korea’s epidemic prevention center had found clusters of infection in Ipho city near the southeastern border, and some Ipho residents with feverish symptoms traveled to Pyongyang. The center said an 18-year-old soldier and a 5-year-old kindergarten boy had contact with “alien stuff” in the city in early April and later tested positive for the Omicron variant.
In what it called “an emergency instruction,” the epidemic prevention center ordered officials to “carefully deal with strange things arriving by wind and other weather phenomena and balloons” along the border and trace their origins. until the end. He also stressed that anyone who finds “strange things” should notify authorities immediately so they can be removed.
The reports did not specify what the “alien things” were. But blaming things flying across the border is likely a way of repeating his objections to the growing activities of North Korean defectors and activists in South Korea.
Leaflet distribution campaigns largely stopped after South Korea’s previous liberal government passed a law criminalizing them, and there were no public balloon attempts in early April.
An activist on trial for past activities flew balloons carrying propaganda leaflets across the border in late April after detaining them for a year. Park Sang-hak floated balloons twice in June, trading cargo in those attempts for COVID-19 relief items such as masks and painkillers.
Police are still investigating recent leafleting activities by the activist, Cha Duck Chul, deputy spokesman for the Ministry of Southern Unification, told reporters on Friday.
Cha also said that the consensus among South Korean health officials and World Health Organization experts is that infections from contact with the virus on the surface of materials are practically impossible.
Analyst Cheong Seong-Chang of South Korea’s Sejong Institute said North Korea wants its people to believe the coronavirus originated from pamphlets, US dollars or other materials carried across the border by balloons.
Cheong said North Korea is likely to severely punish anyone who covertly takes such items from South Korea. He said North Korea could also try to shoot down approaching South Korean balloons, a move that would prompt South Korea to return fire and sharply increase animosities between the countries.
North Korea is infuriated by the leafleting campaign because it is designed to undermine Kim’s authoritarian rule over a population that has little access to outside information. In 2014, North Korea fired on propaganda balloons flying towards its territory and South Korea returned fire, although there were no casualties.
Blaming objects crossing the inter-Korean border contradicts outside opinion that the virus spread after North Korea briefly reopened its northern border with China to freight traffic in January and increased further after a military parade and other events in Pyongyang in April.
After upholding a widely disputed claim of being coronavirus-free for more than two years, North Korea on May 12 admitted to the COVID-19 outbreak, saying an unspecified number of people in Pyongyang had tested positive for the Omicron variant.
Since then, North Korea has reported 4.7 million fever cases among its 26 million people, but only identified a fraction of them as COVID-19. It says 73 people have died, an extremely low death rate. Both figures are believed to be manipulated by North Korea to keep its people alert against the virus and prevent any political damage to Kim.
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Associated Press reporter Kim Tong-hyung contributed to this report.
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