SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has declared victory over Covid-19 and ordered preventive measures eased just three months after acknowledging an outbreak, claiming that the East Asian country’s widely disputed success would be recognized as a global health miracle.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Thursday reported Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, as saying her brother had a fever and she blamed the country’s outbreak on leaflets flown from across the border from South Korea, warning of deadly retaliation.

Some experts believe Pyongyang has manipulated the scale of the outbreak to help Kim maintain absolute control of the country amid mounting economic difficulties. They believe the victory statement signals his aim to move to other priorities, but are concerned that his sister’s remarks portend a provocation.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, issued a statement expressing strong regret over the North’s “extremely disrespectful and threatening comments” that were based on “ridiculous claims” about the source of its infections.

Since Pyongyang admitted to an Omicron outbreak in May, it has reported about 4.8 million “fever cases” in its population of 26 million, but only identified a fraction of them as Covid-19. It has claimed the outbreak has been slowing for weeks and claimed just 74 lives.

“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 a speech on Wednesday, according to KCNA.

“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 virusfree zone again is an amazing miracle that would be recorded in the world’s history of public health,” he said.

For Kim to declare victory against Covid-19 suggests that he wants to move on to other priorities, such as boosting a broken and heavily sanctioned economy further damaged by pandemic border closures or conducting a nuclear test, said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul.

Gearing up for nuke test

South Korean and United States officials have said the North could be gearing up for its first nuclear test in five years amid its torrid run of weapons tests this year that included its first demonstrations of intercontinental ballistic missiles since 2017.

The provocative testing activity underscores Kim’s dual intent to advance his arsenal and pressure US President Joe Biden’s administration over long-stalled negotiations aimed at leveraging its nukes for badly needed sanctions relief and security concessions, experts say.

The bellicose rhetoric of Yo Jong is concerning because it indicates she will try to blame any Covid-19 resurgence on the South and is also looking to justify North Korea’s next military provocation, Easley said.

North Korea first suggested in July that its outbreak began with people who had contact with objects carried by balloons flown from South Korea — a questionable and unscientific claim that appeared to be an attempt to hold its rival responsible.

Activists for years have flown balloons across the border to distribute hundreds of thousands of propaganda leaflets critical of Kim, and North Korea has often expressed fury over the activists and at the South’s leadership for not stopping them.

During Wednesday’s meeting, Yo Jong reiterated those claims, calling the country’s virus crisis a “hysteric farce” kicked off by South Korea to escalate the confrontation. She claimed her brother had shown fever symptoms and praised his “energetic and meticulous guidance” for bringing an “epoch-making miracle” in the fight against Covid-19.

“(South Korean) puppets are still thrusting leaflets and dirty objects into our territory. We must counter it toughly,” she said. “We have already considered various counteraction plans, but our countermeasure must be a deadly retaliatory one.”

Yo Jong’s reference to Kim’s illness wasn’t further explained.