By
Associated Press
North Korea hinted on Friday that its latest COVID-19 outbreak began in people who had contact with balloons sent from South Korea, a dubious claim that appears to be an attempt to hold its neighboring and rival country accountable amid ongoing growing tensions over its nuclear program.
Activist groups have been flying balloons across the border for years to hand out propaganda leaflets against North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, drawing the ire of authorities.
North Korean defectors release balloons with leaflets condemning North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and his government's policies in 2014. Ahn Young-joon / AP
Scientific studies have shown that the coronavirus is spread by inhaling airborne respiratory particles that contain the virus.
South Korea's Unification Ministry said there was no chance balloons sent from its territory could have 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.
[These doctors at a Houston hospital contracted COVID-19. They denounce having been pressured to continue working]
South Korean and US officials have recently said that North Korea is prepared to conduct its first nuclear test in five years, amid its intense run of weapons tests this year.
In what it called "an emergency instruction," North Korea's epidemic prevention center ordered officials to "vigilantly deal with alien airborne objects and other weather phenomena and balloons" along the inter-Korean border and trace its sources to the end.
He also stressed that anyone who finds "strange things" should immediately notify the authorities so they can be removed.
The reports do not specify what kind of "strange things" can be found.
However, international observers point out that blaming objects crossing the border by air is likely a way to deflect attention from complaints about its handling of the pandemic.
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On the other hand, leafleting campaigns were largely halted after South Korea's former liberal government passed a law criminalizing them.
In its earlier dubious statements about COVID-19, North Korea also claimed that the virus could spread through falling snow or migratory birds.
Its pandemic-related restrictions even included a strict ban on entering seawater.
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Analyst Cheong Seong-Chang of South Korea's Sejong Institute said North Korea wants its people to believe that the coronavirus originated from pamphlets, US dollars or other materials carried across the border by balloons.