On Tuesday, North Korea restarted its international flights, marking the first passenger plane’s landing in Beijing since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 led to the country sealing its borders.
China’s Foreign Ministry greenlit the move on Monday, allowing Air Koryo to establish operations between Pyongyang and Beijing. In a related development, tourism group Koryo Tours mentioned a forthcoming move by North Korea to enable citizens who found themselves stranded overseas due to the pandemic to make their way back home, as revealed by NK News based in Pyongyang.
While this move to reopen borders for air travel is significant, insights from experts quoted by the media suggest an underlying motive. The reopening could be a strategy for North Korea to dispatch workers to Russia, potentially filling a labor void exacerbated by the ongoing Ukraine conflict.
In the previous year, North Korea had negotiated with the Russian-controlled Ukrainian territories of Donetsk and Luhansk, aiming to delegate workers to rejuvenate infrastructure following the relaxation of its stringent border protocols. (AA)
