JN / Agencies
Today at 09:11, updated at 09:15
North Korea suggested today that the outbreak of Covid19 started in people who were in contact with balloons launched from South Korea.
North Korean state media reported that North Korea’s disease prevention center has detected outbreaks of infection in the city of Ipho, near the southeastern border with South Korea, and some residents with fever symptoms have traveled to Pyongyang.
The center said an 18yearold soldier and a fiveyearold child had contact with “foreign objects” in the city in early April and later tested positive for the Omicron variant.
In a socalled “emergency directive,” the Epidemic Prevention Center ordered officials to “handle vigilantly” foreign objects carried by wind and other weather phenomena and balloons” along the interKorean border and trace their origin.
He also stressed that anyone who finds “foreign objects” must immediately notify the authorities so that they can be removed.
Balloon campaigns were largely halted after the previous South Korean government passed a law criminalizing them, and there was no such public action in early April.
An activist on trial over previous activities released balloons carrying propaganda leaflets over the border in late April. And it was sent out twice more in June, but swapping out the usual batch of leaflets for Covid19related items like masks and painkillers.
In previous comments on Covid19, North Korea also said the virus could be spread through snowfall or migratory birds. Pandemicrelated restrictions even included strict bans on entering seawater.
For years, activists have been sending balloons across the border to distribute hundreds of thousands of propaganda leaflets criticizing North Korean leader Kim Jongun. North Korea has criticized the South Korean leadership for not stopping the activists.
World health authorities say the coronavirus is spread by people in close contact, breathing in airborne droplets, and is more likely to occur in enclosed, poorly ventilated spaces than outdoors.
A spokesman for the Southern Unification Ministry told journalists that there was a consensus between South Korean health authorities and experts from the World Health Organization: infections through contact with the corona virus on the surface of materials were practically impossible.
There is no way South Korean balloons could have transported and spread SARSCoV2 in North Korea, he reiterated.
Relations between the two countries remain strained amid a long standoff in USled diplomacy to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions in exchange for economic and political benefits.