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North Korea reported Friday that its COVID-19 outbreak began in other people who had been in contact with South Korean balloons, a highly questionable claim that appeared to be an attempt to hold its rival accountable amid emerging tensions.
For years, activists have flown balloons across the border to distribute loads of thousands of propaganda leaflets criticizing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and North Korea has expressed anger at South Korean activists and leaders for failing to arrest them.
The global fitness government says the coronavirus spreads through other people in close contact who inhale droplets in the air and is more likely to occur indoors and poorly ventilated than outdoors. South Korea’s Unification Ministry said there is no chance south Korean balloons have spread the virus. in North Korea
Ties between the Koreas were strained amid a long-standing stalemate in U. S. -led international relations to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions in exchange for economic and political benefits.
The state media report said North Korea’s epidemic prevention center discovered clusters of infection in the town of Ipho near the southeastern border, and some Ipho citizens with feverish symptoms traveled to Pyongyang. The center said an 18-year-old soldier and a 5-year-old kindergarten student had been in contact with “extraterrestrial things” in the city in early April and then tested positive for the omicron variant.
In what it called “an emergency instruction,” the epidemic prevention center ordered officials to “carefully treat extraterrestrial things coming through wind and other weather phenomena and balloons” along the border and hinted at their resources to the last. Also under pressure that anyone who discovers “extraterrestrial stuff” will have to notify the government without delay so they can be removed.
The reports did not specify what “extraterrestrial things” were. But blaming things that crossed the border is a way to repeat their objections to the hot air balloon activities of North Korean defectors and militants in South Korea.
Leaflet distribution campaigns came to a large halt after South Korea’s previous liberal government passed a law criminalizing them, and there were no attempts at public balloons in early April.
An activist who is on trial for his activities beyond flew balloons with propaganda leaflets across the border beyond April after interrupting them for a year. Park Sang-hak floated balloons twice in June, moving the shipment in those COVID-19 attempts relief pieces like mask and painkillers.
Police are still investigating recent leaflet distribution activities through activist Cha Duck Chul, deputy spokesman for the Southern Unification Ministry, said on Friday.
Cha also said the consensus among South Korean fitness officials and World Health Organization experts is that infections through contact with the virus on the surface of fabrics are impossible.
Analyst Cheong Seong-Chang of South Korea’s Sejong Institute said North Korea needs its other friends for the coronavirus to come from leaflets, U. S. dollars or other fabrics transported across the border in balloons.
Cheong said North Korea would likely severely punish anyone who secretly takes such items from South Korea. He said North Korea could also try to shoot down incoming South Korean balloons, a move that would prompt South Korea to retaliate and drastically aggravate animosities between the countries. Countries.
North Korea is exasperated by the pamphlet distribution crusade because it is designed to undermine Kim’s authoritarian regime over a population that has little access to outside information. In 2014, North Korea fired propaganda balloons flying into its territory and South Korea retaliated. no casualties
Blaming products crossing the inter-Korean border contradicts public opinion that the virus spread after North Korea briefly reopened its northern border with China to freight traffic in January and escalated further after a military parade and other events in Pyongyang in April.
After maintaining a widely controversial claim to be coronavirus-free for more than two years, North Korea admitted to the COVID-19 outbreak on May 12, claiming that an unknown number of other people in Pyongyang had tested positive for the omicron variant.
Since then, North Korea has reported about 4. 7 million cases of fever from its other 26 million people, but has only known a fraction of them as COVID-19. It indicates that another 73 people have died, an incredibly low death rate. Both figures are Believed to have been manipulated by North Korea to keep its other people vigilant against the virus and any political damage to Kim.
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Associated Press Kim Tong-hyung contributed to this report.
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