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NEW DELHI : The Korean war between the communist North Korea and South Korea took from 1950-1953. Border conflicts and tensions have been a perennial state between the two countries. The monarch of North Korea Kim-Jong Un and his aides and government has been popular for making some bizarre allegations, much of which could never be verified owing to strict invigilation in the North Korea.
This time too they lived up to their reputations and on Friday, 22 July alleged the South Korean balloons of breaking the wave of Coronavirus caes in the tightly fortified country. North Korea said that the Ciovd-19 outbreak in their country broke out after its residents touched “alien things" near the border with South Korea.
The North Korean government directed its residents to “vigilantly deal with alien things coming by wind and other climate phenomena and balloons in the areas along the demarcation line and borders".
An 18-year-old soldier and a five-year-old who came in contact with some unidentified materials “in a hill around barracks and residential quarters" in the eastern county of Kumgang in early April showed symptoms and later tested positive for the coronavirus, state media KCNA reported. State media added that all other fever cases reported in the country till mid-April were due to other diseases but it did not elaborate.
“The investigation results showed that several persons coming from the area of Ipho-ri in Kumgang county of Kangwon province to the capital city in mid-April were in fever and a sharp increase of fever cases was witnessed among their contacts... and a group of fevered persons emerged in the area … for the first time," it said.
Health authorities in the hermit kingdom have been using fever as a euphemism for Covid-19, according to Independent .
The isolated nation shut down its borders at the onset of the pandemic in 2020 but only publicly acknowledged its first case of Covid-19 on 12 May this year.
Soon after, North Korea declared a state of emergency. Throughout 2020 and 2021, North Korea had claimed that there were zero infections in the country, though global health experts were sceptical.
In July 2020, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had imposed a three-week lockdown on Kaesong town near the inter-Korean border after a man who defected to South Korea in 2017 returned to the city with symptoms of Covid.
Balloon propaganda campaigns in Korea include both North and South Korean propaganda leaflet campaigns through the use of balloons as a distribution method since the Korean War. A variety of other contents have also been included with the balloons.
Originally, these campaigns were organized by the governments and militaries of the Korean states. Contemporarily, however, they are mainly organized by South Korean non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that regularly involve themselves in balloon release events that aim to send materials censored in North Korea, as well as various other goods, to the North Korean people.
North Korean defectors and activists in South Korea have for decades flown balloons carrying leaflets and humanitarian aid across the heavily-fortified border.
The previous government in Seoul, under president Moon Jae-in, had barred such campaigns in 2020 citing safety concerns of residents on the border. Activists had called the ban an attempt to whitewash Pyongyang and silence critics amid efforts to improve cross-border ties.
Meanwhile, Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul told The Guardian that it is “hard to believe North Korea’s claim, scientifically speaking, given that the possibility of the virus spreading through objects is quite low".
(With inputs from agencies)