{"id":45927,"date":"2022-07-01T12:40:55","date_gmt":"2022-07-01T03:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/jul\/01\/north-korea-blames-covid-laden-balloons-sent-from-south-for-virus-outbreak"},"modified":"2022-07-01T12:40:55","modified_gmt":"2022-07-01T03:40:55","slug":"north-korea-blames-covid-laden-balloons-sent-from-south-for-virus-outbreak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=45927","title":{"rendered":"North Korea blames Covid-laden balloons sent from South for virus outbreak"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Experts sceptical of claim, as state media urge citizens to watch out for \u2018alien things coming by wind\u2019<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/north-korea\">North Korea<\/a> has blamed its Covid-19 outbreak on balloons sent over its border with the South by groups of defectors, in an apparent attempt to shift the blame onto its neighbour.<\/p>\n<p>After two years of insisting that it had not recorded a single case of the virus, the North <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/may\/12\/north-korea-admits-to-covid-outbreak-for-first-time\">admitted its first infections<\/a> on 12 May, sparking fears of a public health disaster in the impoverished country.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/jul\/01\/north-korea-blames-covid-laden-balloons-sent-from-south-for-virus-outbreak\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Experts sceptical of claim, as state media urge citizens to watch out for \u2018alien things coming by wind\u2019North Korea has blamed its Covid-19 outbreak on balloons sent over its border with the South by groups of defectors, in an apparent attempt to shift &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":344,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,1066,40,222],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-coronavirus","category-north-korea","category-south-korea"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/344"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45927"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45928,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45927\/revisions\/45928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}