DPRK warns Seoul authorities against causing COVID-19 outbreak
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The Democratic People's Republic of Korea warned the authorities in Seoul against provoking the entry of Covid into the northern country.
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People wearing protective face masks commute in Pyongyang, Democratic People's Republic of Korea (Reuters)
The Deputy Director of the Publicity and Information Department of the Workers' Party of Korea, Kim Yo Jong, vowed retaliation against South Korea if the latter were to continue embarking on the path that could cause COVID-19 to seep into the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
"If the enemy persists in such dangerous actions as provoking the entry of the virus into our republic, we will respond by eradicating not only the virus but also the South Korean authorities," Yonhap news agency quoted the DPRK leader's sister as saying.
DPRK leader Kim Jong Un declared victory over the COVID-19 outbreak in the country earlier in the day after the country grappled with the crisis for months.
Pyongyang had accused South Korea of causing the COVID-19 outbreak that started crystalizing in May. Seoul rejected these accusations.
The DPRK accusations come in light of South Korean activists flying balloons containing US dollars and propaganda leaflets over their country's border with the North, which Pyongyang has long been protesting against, leading Seoul to ban it in 2021. These activities still took place despite the ban, however.
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea had gone almost two and a half years without recording a single case of Covid despite the outbreak causing the rest of the world to be up against the ropes amid massive waves of cases that have exceeded half a billion as of Thursday, nearing 600 million.
Kim Yo Jong blamed these activities for the outbreak in the country, calling them a "crime against humanity," the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.
She said that many countries, as well as the World Health Organization, have acknowledged "the danger of spreading an infectious disease through contacting contaminated objects," the report added.
"It is very worrisome that South Korea is sending leaflets, money, sloppy brochures, and items into our region," she said.
Seoul said in July there had been "no officially verified cases of Covid infections via post or materials."
The DPRK leader's sister said Kim Jong Un suffered from Covid, adding that he had a high fever in the final days of the outbreak.
He "was suffering from high fever during the days of this quarantine war, but he could not lie down for a moment as he was thinking about the people he was responsible for," Kim said.
The DPRK confirmed on May 12 its first-ever Covid outbreak, with state media declaring it a "severe national emergency incident." Every day since, state media has reported the official number of cases, deaths, treatments, and recoveries.
On August 5, Pyongyang announced that there were no new cases registered that day for the seventeenth day in a row.
In the case of reports, North Korea refers to "fever patients" rather than "Covid patients," owing to a lack of testing capacity as a result of the unilateral US sanctions imposed on the Asian country.
It is worth noting that North Korea has recorded nearly 4.8 million infections since late April, with only 74 deaths, for an official fatality rate of 0.002% despite all the economic hardship the US is putting the country through via all the sanctions it had imposed on it.
