Covid was not introduced to North Korea by smuggling activities along the Chinese border, as believed likely, but by counter-propaganda leaflets carried by South Korean activists’ balloons. This is the latest thesis supported by the health authorities of Pyongyang, according to a dispatch from the KCNA agency, the result of an investigation that identified the first “cases of fever” after in an 18-year-old soldier and a 5-year-old child. having come into contact with “alien objects”, balloons and flyers. The area of the first “malignant epidemic” is that of Ipho-ri on the border with the eastern South Korean counties of Inje and Yanggu, in the province of Gangwon.
In Pyongyang, the virus, which has so far affected nearly 5 million people, allegedly arrived in mid-April through people from Ipho-ri, in Kangwon province. The North reported its first outbreak in over two years of the pandemic on May 12, launching extraordinary containment measures. The results of the investigation, released yesterday by the State Center for the Prevention of the Epidemic and Emergencies, had already been submitted and approved by the Central Committee of the Korean Workers’ Party and by the government, with the endorsement of the leader Kim Jong -a. The Center also “ordered the issuance of emergency instructions” for surveillance “of alien objects carried by the wind – reported the KCNA – or by other climatic phenomena, and by balloons in the areas along the border”.
The leaflets have been a source of tension between the two Koreas, with the hermit state calling on the Southern government to take tougher measures to stop the “defamation campaign”, threatening a military response. The South Korean government has rejected the North’s claims, noting that there is no possibility that its coronavirus outbreak is linked “to such materials from the South. There is a common view of organizations,” said Cha Duck-chul, a spokesman for the Unification ministry – and Seoul and international health experts that Covid infection through surface contact is realistically impossible “.