North Korea blamed its COVID-19 outbreak on “alien things” likely sent by balloon across its border with South Korea, saying a teenage soldier and a five-year-old girl in April were the first people in the country infected by coronavirus.
Kim Jong Un’s regime called on its officials “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 official Korean Central News Agency said Friday.
Human rights groups led by defectors in South Korea have been sending balloons with what they say is Covid aid across the border from the western side of the peninsula. Although it is possible to contract COVID-19 by touching some surfaces, the chances of it being sent by balloons traveling more than 200 kilometers (125 miles) is very low. Kim Dong-hyun, a former president of Korean Society of Epidemiology in South Korea said North Korea’s claims sounded like “nonsense.”
