...hereditary Communist monarchy distinguished by its truculence and periodic acts of violence. Distinguishing features include Songun (Army First) policy, which involves feeding the army before anyone but the Dear Leadership, and Juche, which is Kim Jong Il's personal interpretation of Marxism-Leninism, which he told everybody was brilliant. In 1950 the industrialized North invaded agrarian South Korea. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the UN force opposing the invasion, with the United States providing around 90% of the military personnel. Seventy years later the economic results are in and it doesn't look good for Juche...is blaming its COVID-19 outbreak on "alien things" — including balloons flown from South Korea.
The state media report said the hermit kingdom’s epidemic prevention center had found COVID clusters in the town of Ipho near its southeastern border with South Korea and that some Ipho residents with feverish symptoms traveled to Pyongyang.
The center said an 18-year-old soldier and a 5-year-old child had contact with "alien things" in the town located in the eastern county of Kumgang in early April and later tested positive for the Omicron variant.
In what it called "an emergency instruction," the epidemic prevention center ordered officials to "vigilantly deal with alien things coming by wind and other climate phenomena and balloons" along the inter-Korean border and trace their sources. It also stressed that anyone finding "alien things" must notify authorities immediately so they could be removed.
The reports did not specify what the "alien things" were. But laying the blame on things flown across the border likely 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.