Kim Jong Un regime blames South Korea balloons for Covid spread

North Korea has long confronted an array of fearsome weaponry across its southern border, but the device that appears to unnerve the totalitarian regime is the humble balloon.

For a country that has sought for decades to isolate its population from the outside world, balloons sent from neighbouring South Korea represent an unacceptable incursion — and even a bearer of Covid-19.

In recent weeks Pyongyang has furiously denounced the resumption of balloon flights carrying items ranging from anti-regime leaflets and electronic devices to coronavirus aid including masks and pain relief tablets.

Park Sang-hak, a human-rights activist, North Korean defector and the organiser of balloon flights into the East Asian country, said last month that he had used 20 balloons to fly 20,000 masks, 15,000 Tylenol pills and 30,000 vitamin C supplements over the border from Pocheon near the demilitarised zone dividing the Korean peninsula.

Park has since organised two more rounds of flights, the latest of which carried a large banner blaming North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for May’s Covid outbreak.

This month, North Korean state media attributed a large-scale coronavirus outbreak in the country to “alien things coming by wind” and landing near the border with South Korea.

According to Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the source of the outbreak was an 18-year-old soldier and a five-year-old child who both came into contact with objects near the border.

The state Rodong Sinmun newspaper urged citizens to “deal vigilantly” with the “alien things”, as well as “other climate phenomena and balloons”.

Medical experts have rejected Pyongyang’s claims.

“Even if there were no balloon launches, Pyongyang would just find another way to blame South Korea for challenges like Covid,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.

According to South Korea’s ministry of unification, the flights violate a 2020 anti-leafleting law instituted by Moon Jae-in, the then left-leaning president, in an attempt to smooth relations with Pyongyang.

The law, which prohibits any unauthorised items from being sent into the North, was enacted months after the North Korean armed forces destroyed an inter-Korean liaison office in apparent retaliation for anti-Kim leaflets being flown into the country.

James Fretwell, an analyst at Seoul-based information service NK Pro, said the resumption of balloon flights has put Yoon Suk-yeol, South Korea’s conservative president, in an invidious position.

The Yoon administration has committed to respecting a series of inter-Korean agreements signed by Kim and Moon in 2018, one of which contained a commitment by Seoul to halt the balloon flights.

But were the flights to be stopped or activists prosecuted, the president would probably face a backlash both from his conservative base in South Korea and from human rights organisations at home and in the US.

“Yoon is damned if he supports the activists, and damned if he doesn’t,” said Fretwell, noting an incident in 2014 when North Korea responded to a balloon launch with anti-aircraft machinegun fire.

“It is difficult to understate just how much North Korea hates these balloon launches. In a worst-case scenario, they could be used as a pretext to take some kind of military action.”