North Korea has traced the origin of its Covid outbreak from “people touching alien things” near the South Korean border. In fact, the country is now battling its first outbreak of Covid infections, declaring a state of emergency in May after two years of enforcing tight restrictions to prevent the virus from entering the country.
The government has ordered its people to “vigilantly deal with alien things coming by wind and other climate phenomena and balloons in the areas along the demarcation line and borders.”
The Kim Jong-Un administration made these remarks, Friday, while announcing the results of the probe that sought to find out how the rather closed-in country contracted its first case. The comments were seen as an attempt to deflect the blame to its neighbour for the wave of coronavirus infections affecting the North.
According to its findings, an 18-year-old soldier and a five-year-old kindergartener who contacted the 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.
“The investigation proves that several persons in Ipho-ri in Kumgang County of Kangwon Province exhibited the same symptoms. There was a sudden increase of fever cases among the primary contacts,” KCNA, the state media reported.
In July 2020, leader Kim Jong Un declared an emergency and imposed a three-week lockdown on Kaesong town, near the inter-Korean border, after a man who defected to the South in 2017 returned to the city showing COVID symptoms.
