North Korea claimed on Friday the country's first COVID outbreak began with patients touching 'alien things' near the border with South Korea, apparently shifting blame to the neighbor for the wave of infections that hit the isolated country.
Announcing its probe results, North Korea 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." FILE PHOTO
According to the state media KCNA, 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. North Korean defectors and activists in South Korea had for decades flown balloons carrying leaflets and humanitarian aid across the heavily fortified border.
In July 2020, the North's 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.
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