SEOUL, South Korea — Authorities in North Korea have instructed their people to avoid “alien things” falling near the border with South Korea.
North Korea’s state-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun published a news report on where the COVID-19 virus came from and pointed the finger at materials arriving from South Korea. The newspaper said two local residents showed symptoms of COVID-19 after touching “alien things” at the border.
“The Emergency Epidemic Prevention Headquarters has arranged for an urgent instruction to be issued emphasizing the need to vigilantly deal with extraterrestrial things coming from the wind and other weather phenomena and balloons in the areas along the demarcation line and borders,” Rodong Sinmun said on Friday.
The influx of non-local objects, particularly from the southern half of the Korean peninsula, has put North Korea’s border on the highest alert level for the longest time since the two Koreas split in 1953. Sending propaganda leaflets and materials into the air balloons are common practice on both sides, but Seoul declared them illegal in 2020.
“It seems like this is an attempt to arouse suspicion among North Korean citizens about the propaganda leaflets, an attempt to spread the false idea that the leaflets carry COVID-19,” Hyung Joong Park, chief researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told ABC News.
Park also explained that they are shaping the narrative that COVID was caused not by party failures, but by a premeditated move from outside.
A worker in a protective suit disinfects a shop in Pyongyang, North Korea, June 27, 2022.
Kyodo News via Getty Images
North Korea reported more than 4,750 cases of the “fever” on Friday and claimed that as of Thursday night, since the pandemic began, more than 99,827 percent of people who had the “fever” had recovered. North Korea has an extremely limited number of COVID test kits because the regime has refused to accept foreign aid to identify patients.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry responded to North Korea’s accusation that they saw zero possibility of viruses entering North Korea through leaflets from the South, explaining that the timing of the North’s claim of contact with “alien materials” in early April did not match with the time of leafleting, which activists in South Korea say was late April.
“The South Korean Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization are on the same page that it is impossible to be infected with COVID-19 through the virus left on the surface of an object, let alone that there is no officially confirmed case of infection with COVID-19 by mail or otherwise,” Cha Duk Chul, deputy spokesman for the South’s Unification Ministry, told reporters on Friday.
On Tuesday, the Seoul-based defector group Fighters For North Korea claimed to have flown 20 unauthorized balloons carrying masks, pain pills and doses of vitamin C to send support to pandemic-hit North Korea.
“South Korea’s accusation of the balloon and leaflets spreading a virus sets the stage for North Korea to take extreme measures against balloon launches on the grounds that it is a threat to national security,” said John Delury, a professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Yonsei University ABC News.
ABC News’ Eunseo Nam and Hyerim Lee contributed to this report.
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