According to KCNA state media, North Korea plans to allow its citizens to return home after a nearly four-year absence due to pandemic-related border restrictions.
Medical professionals will monitor individuals who return for a week while they reside in a designated facility.
After the first flight from Pyongyang arrived in Beijing since 2020, this appears to be their latest move aimed at easing Covid regulations.
China recently started allowing commercial flights between Beijing and Pyongyang once again.
North Korea is one of the few countries that still does that.
Chinese and Russian officials were the first visitors from other countries to go to North Korea in a longtime. They went to Pyongyang to watch a military parade.
Several weeks after, the country gave permission to a group of their athletes to join a taekwondo contest in Kazakhstan.
On Tuesday, an Air Koryo airplane from North Korea’s main airline arrived in China. This happened one day after the Chinese foreign ministry said it gave permission for commercial flights to start again between the two countries.
It was not clear who was on the flight back to Pyongyang, but Yonhap news said many North Koreans were waiting in line at Beijing International Airport.
A lot of North Korean students, workers, and diplomats have been unable to leave China for three and a half years.
People in the country can go back home, but we don’t know when foreign diplomats and aid workers will be allowed in.
North Korea, which likes to be alone, closed itself off in early 2020 to protect against the pandemic. However, they also disconnected from trade and diplomatic relationships, which means they stopped getting important things like food and medicine from other countries.
A lot of countries had to close their embassies in Pyongyang because they couldn’t change their staff or send supplies during most of the pandemic.
After that, North Korea has had problems getting enough food, which has become even worse because other countries have put strict rules on them because of their nuclear program.
But as North Korea starts to remove the last parts of its Covid-era restrictions, which it says matches the global pandemic situation, it has given hope that borders might reopen soon for foreign diplomats and aid.
However, the process is anticipated to be closely monitored and may still require a significant amount of time.