North Korea claims the Covid outbreak in the country is due to ‘corona balloons’ being blown across the border in an attempt to shift the blame onto neighboring South Korea.
–
Activists have for years used balloons to send anti-dictatorial pamphlets across the country’s heavily armed border. They also try to send humanitarian aid in this way. So now corona would be deliberately brought into North Korea by the balloons, which make people in the border region sick if they touch it.
–
For two years, North Korea insisted it had not registered a single case of the virus, but had to admit its first infections on May 12. Fears arose of a humanitarian public health disaster in the poor country.
–
Today, the country reported that 4,570 people showed new fever symptoms, bringing the total number of cases to nearly five million, at a population of 25 million. Health authorities are referring to fever symptoms rather than Covid-19, likely due to a shortage of test kits. North Korea has reported just 73 deaths. The totalitarian regime makes it impossible to verify the statistics on cases and deaths.
–
‘Alien Things’
The official KCNA news agency said today that it had found infection clusters in the city of Ipho near the southeastern border with South Korea and that some residents have traveled to the capital Pyongyang with feverish symptoms. An 18-year-old soldier and a 5-year-old toddler had contact with “alien things” in the city in early April and later tested positive for the omikron variant. “A sharp increase in fever cases has been observed in their contacts. It was the first time a group of feverish individuals showed up in the area.”
–
–
The first time North Korea suspects that ‘corona balloons’ were sent across the border would have been at the end of April. KCNA warns citizens to “be vigilant about extraterrestrial things carried by wind and other climate phenomena or balloons in the areas along the borders.” The news agency reports do not explicitly mention South Korea, but experts have no doubt that North Korea is accusing the neighboring country.
–
South Korea says there is “no possibility” that the coronavirus actually entered the north via balloons. Experts are also critical of the claims from the capital Pyongyang. “It is scientifically difficult to believe that the virus spreads through objects, as the chances of the virus spreading via surfaces are quite small,” Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told IPS. The Guardian† A more plausible explanation is that the virus entered the country through cross-border trade with China.
–
North Korea has rejected foreign aid in the form of medical supplies and corona vaccines.
–
Watch our videos about the coronavirus here:
–
Free unlimited access to Showbytes? Which can!
Log in or create an account and never miss a thing from the stars.
–
–
