North Korea on Friday asserted that the country's first COVID-19 crisis was caused by patients contacting "alien stuff" near the border with South Korea.
Analysts say the actuations are apparently to transfer the blame for the surge of infections in the reclusive country to the South.
According to KCNA, an 18-year-old soldier and a 5-year-old kindergartener who came into contact with unidentified materials "on a hill around barracks and residential areas" in the eastern county of Kumgang in early April exhibited symptoms and tested positive for the coronavirus.
The official KCNA news agency disclosed that the North issued an order to "vigilantly deal with alien objects coming by wind and other climate phenomena and balloons in the areas along the demarcation line and borders."
The agency did not directly name South Korea, but North Korean defectors and activists have flown balloons carrying pamphlets and humanitarian aid across the heavily defended border with the South for decades.
The South Korean ministry in charge of inter-Korean relations stated that it was "impossible" for the virus to infiltrate the North via leaflets sent across the border.
Until mid-April, the KCNA stated that all other fever cases reported in the country were related to other ailments, but did not clarify.
Professor Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul stated, "From a scientific standpoint, it is difficult to believe North Korea's assertion, considering the limited likelihood of the virus spreading through things."
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the likelihood of becoming infected with COVID by contact with contaminated surfaces or items is low yet conceivable.
The North also claimed that the first two patients touched the unidentified items in an eastern city in early April, however the first time a defector group is known to have sent balloons across the border this year was from the Gimpo region in the west in late April.
The North's first acknowledgement of a COVID epidemic occurred months after it loosened border restrictions imposed at the beginning of 2020 to resume freight train operations with China.
However, it would have been impossible for Pyongyang to cast a finger at China, according to Professor Lim Eul-chul of Kyungnam University's Institute of Far Eastern Studies.
The North has asserted that the COVID outbreak is showing signs of abating. On Friday, 4,570 additional fever patients were announced by North Korea, bringing the total number of fever sufferers since late April to 4,74 million.
