As the country gradually relaxes its harsh coronavirus restrictions, North Korea declared on Sunday that it will permit its citizens who are overseas to come home in accordance with the global trend of fewer pandemics.
The State Emergency Epidemic Prevention Headquarters said in a brief statement carried by state media that people returning to North Korea will be placed in quarantine for a week for “proper medical observation.”
The statement was vague. Analysts, however, projected that the declaration would result in the return of North Korean students, employees, and others who had to remain overseas due to the virus, largely in China and Russia. The employees are the nation’s main source of foreign revenue.
After the pandemic started, North Korea prohibited tourists, flew out diplomats, and drastically reduced border travel and trade. The ongoing economic hardships and food insecurity in the North have gotten worse as a result of the lockdown.
South Korea’s spy agency claimed earlier this month that North Korea was planning to progressively reopen its borders in an effort to boost its economy.
The first such commercial international flight from the North believed to have left the country in almost 312 years touched down in Beijing on Tuesday. Later in the day, the plane made its way back from Beijing, but it was unclear who was on board.
At the beginning of August, a team of North Korean taekwondo competitors and officials traveled by land to Beijing before boarding a plane to Kazakhstan to take part in an international match.
The group of about 80 men and women was spotted at the international airport in Beijing’s departure hall wearing white tracksuits with the North Korean flag sewn onto the front of each one. Since the start of the epidemic, North Korea had never sent such a sizable delegation outside.
A rare source of foreign income will be lost for North Korea if employees from other countries return, according to Cheong Seong-Chang, an analyst at the private Sejong Institute. As a result, the regime will probably push for the dispatch of new workers to China and Russia to take their place.
A U.N. Security Council resolution requiring member states to return all North Korean employees from their territories by the end of 2019 would be broken by taking on new North Korean workers.
Cheong stated that it seemed doubtful North Korea would resume accepting Chinese and other foreign tourists very soon given their intention to confine returnees for a week. If the return of its citizens does not result in any coronavirus outbreaks, he said, North Korea is anticipated to permit outsiders to enter the country the following year.
North Korea claimed to have defeated the Covid-19 pandemic in August 2022, but this assertion is very speculative. The North restarted freight rail service with China, its key trading partner and economic artery, in the following month, although many of its restrictions on individual border crossings are still in place.