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A man who recently swam back to North Korea after defecting years ago – leading Kim Jong Un to place a border city on lockdown over fears he had the coronavirus – isn’t actually carrying the disease, the South revealed Monday.
The 24-year-old individual reached the Hermit Kingdom last week after crawling underneath barbed wire inside a drain on Ganghwa Island and then crossing a portion of the Yellow Sea, according to the BBC.
"The person is neither registered as a Covid-19 patient, nor classified as a person who came in contact with virus patients," the station quoted Yoon Tae-ho -- a South Korean senior health official – as telling the Yonhap News Agency.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un placed the city of Kaesong near the border with South Korea under total lockdown after a person was found there with suspected COVID-19 symptoms, saying “the vicious virus” may have entered the country, state media reported (Naohiko Hatta/Kyodo News/Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)
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The man reportedly was identified after South Korean military officials found a bag he is believed to have left behind during his escape.
North Korean state media had reported Sunday that a suspected coronavirus patient inside their country is a runaway who fled to South Korea three years ago before illegally crossing the border into the North early last week.
The news prompted Kim to place the border city of Kaesong on total lockdown Friday afternoon.
During an emergency Politburo meeting the next day, Kim also declared a state of emergency in the Kaesong area and “clarified the determination of the Party Central Committee to shift from the state emergency anti-epidemic system to the maximum emergency system and issue a top-class alert,” the Korean Central News Agency said.
KIM JONG UN SAYS ‘VICIOUS VIRUS’ MAY BE IN COUNTRY
It quoted Kim as saying there was “a critical situation in which the vicious virus could be said to have entered the country.”
Kim added he took “the preemptive measure of totally blocking Kaesong City and isolating each district and region from the other" on Friday afternoon after receiving the report on it, according to KCNA.
KCNA also had said respiratory secretion and blood tests showed the person “is suspected to have been infected” with the coronavirus and that the individual was placed under quarantine.
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Describing its anti-virus efforts as a “matter of national existence,” North Korea earlier this year shut down nearly all cross-border traffic, banned foreign tourists, and mobilized health workers to quarantine anyone with symptoms. But the Kaesong lockdown is the first such known measure taken in a North Korean city to stem the pandemic.
North Korean continues to insist it has zero confirmed coronavirus cases -- a claim that many outside experts suspect is false.
Fox News' Travis Fedschun and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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