North Korea suggests Covid outbreak began with South Korean balloons

North Korea suggested on Friday that its Covid 19 outbreak began in people who had contact with balloons flown from South Korea — a highly questionable claim that appeared to be an attempt to hold its rival responsible amid increasing tensions over its nuclear program.

Activists have flown balloons across the border to distribute hundreds of thousands of propaganda leaflets critical of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and North Korea has expressed fury at the activists and South Korea s leadership for not stopping them.

Global health authorities say that the coronaviruses are spread by people in close contact who inhale airborne droplets and are more likely to occur in enclosed, poorly ventilated spaces than outdoors. South Korea's Unification Ministry said there was no chance that South Korean balloons might have spread the disease to North Korea.

There is a strained relationship between the Koreas amid a long-running stalemate in U.S.-led diplomacy on persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions in return for economic and political benefits. South Korea and U.S. officials have recently said that North Korea is ready for its first nuclear test in five years, despite its torrid run of weapons tests this year.

According to the state media report, North Korea's epidemic prevention center has found infection clusters in the town of Ipho near its southeastern border with South Korea and that some Ipho residents with feverish symptoms have traveled to Pyongyang. The center said that an 18-year-old soldier and a 5-year-old kindergartener had contact with alien things in the town in early April and later tested positive for the omicron variant.

In what it called emergency instruction, the epidemic prevention center ordered officials to deal with alien things coming from wind and other climate phenomena and balloons along the inter-Korean border and trace their sources to the last. It stressed that anyone who finds alien things must notify authorities immediately so they can be removed.

The reports did not specify what the alien things were. But laying blame on things that have flown across the border is a way to ease public complaints about its handling of the pandemic while repeating its objections to the ballooning activities of North Korean defectors and activists in South Korea, observers say.

Leafletting campaigns were largely stopped after South Korea s previous liberal government passed a law criminalizing them, and there were no public balloon attempts in early April.

An activist who is currently being tried for past activities flew balloons carrying propaganda leaflets across the border in late April after halting them for a year. Park Sang-hak floated balloons twice in June, switching the cargo on those attempts to Covid- 19 relief items such as masks and painkillers.