In a striking speech before thousands of North Koreans, leader Kim Jong Un’s sister said he suffered a fever while guiding the country to victory over the coronavirus. She blamed rival South Korea for the outbreak and vowed “deadly” retaliation. Kim Yo Jong, a powerful official in charge of inter-Korean relations, glorified her brother’s leadership during the outbreak in her speech Wednesday at a national meeting where he jubilantly described the country’s widely disputed success over the virus as an “amazing miracle” in global public health. North Korea’s statements about its outbreak are widely believed to be manipulated to help Kim Jong Un maintain absolute authority. But experts believe the victory announcement signals his intention to move to other priorities and are concerned his sister’s remarks portend a provocation, which might include nuclear or missile tests or even border skirmishes. The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said Thursday that Kim Jong Un declared victory over COVID-19 and ordered an easing of preventive measures just three months after the country first acknowledged an outbreak. In her first known televised speech, his sister said he suffered a fever and glorified his “epoch-making” leadership. In a dubious claim, she accused South Korea of spreading COVID-19 to North Korea’s largely unvaccinated populace, saying the initial infections were caused by “leaflets, banknotes, awful booklets” and other items flown across the border by anti-North Korean activists in the South. North Korea first suggested in July that its COVID-19 outbreak began in people who had contact with objects carried by balloons launched from South Korea — a questionable claim that appeared to be an attempt to blame its rival. South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, expressed strong regret over North Korea’s “extremely disrespectful and threatening comments” based on “ridiculous claims.” A senior South Korean presidential office official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in a background briefing, said Seoul is preparing for various possible North Korean provocations, including a test detonation of a nuclear device. Since North Korea acknowledged its coronavirus outbreak in May, it has reported about 4.8 million “fever cases” in its population of 26 million but only identified a fraction of those as COVID-19. The country, which likely lacks test kits and other public health tools, has claimed the outbreak has been slowing for weeks and that just 74 people have died. “Since we began operating the maximum emergency anti-epidemic campaign (in May), daily fever cases that reached hundreds of thousands during the early days of the outbreak were reduced to below 90,000 a month later and continuously decreased, and not a single case of fever suspected to be linked to the evil virus has been reported since July 29,” Kim said in his speech Wednesday during a national meeting at which he announced a revised pandemic response. “For a country that has yet to administer a single vaccine shot, our success in overcoming the spread of the illness in such a short period of time and recovering safety in public health and making our nation a clean virus-free zone again is an amazing miracle that would be recorded in the world’s history of public health,” KCNA quoted him as saying. For Kim to declare victory against the coronavirus suggests he wants to move on to other priorities, such as boosting […]

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