Russian diplomats leave North Korea on a train tram pushed by hand due to Covid-19 restrictions

North Korea’s borders have been effectively blocked for months as part of the Kim Jong Un regime’s efforts to keep Covid-19 under control, leaving the few diplomats operating inside Pyongyang. North Korean state airline Air Koryo operates flights from Vladivostok, in eastern Russia, but those flights have also been suspended for months.

The journey started by train. The Russians spent 32 hours traveling on North Korea’s old, poorly maintained and notoriously slow rail system. Then they took a bus for two hours to the border, where families had to order a tram to take their luggage and push the rest of the way.

The embassy published two photos of the third secretary Vladislav Sorokin pushing his family and their luggage along the tracks while wearing thick winter clothes. The youngest of the crew was Sorokin’s 3-year-old daughter, Varya.

Sorokin had to push the wheelbarrow for a kilometer (0.6 miles), part of which included a bridge across the Tumen River that separates Russia from North Korea.

As soon as the family arrived at the Russian station in Khasan, they were met by colleagues from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who helped them to reach Vladivostok airport.

More isolation

The departure of the Sorokin family and other Russian diplomats means that the already small expat community in Pyongyang, a valuable source of information in one of the world’s most secluded and secretive countries, is shrinking further.

Diplomats, aid workers and NGO workers have chosen to leave North Korea instead of risking being trapped due to the country’s tight border controls. Foreigners who chose to stay in North Korea described an increasingly dire situation in Pyongyang, with supermarkets running out of food and people losing their jobs, according to Russian Ambassador to North Korea, Alexander Matsegora.

North Korea decided to cut almost all of its ties with the outside world in 2020 to avoid an influx of coronavirus cases. Experts believe Kim made the decision because he acknowledged that his country’s dilapidated health care system would be dominated by an outbreak.

Matsegora said imports to North Korea have stopped almost entirely since devastating typhoons hit the Korean Peninsula in September. “The North Korean leader has openly admitted that there is no complete medical infrastructure here that meets modern requirements and is capable of handling this problem,” he said in an interview with the Russian news agency Interfax.

Kim’s strategy seems to have worked from a public health perspective. North Korea did not report a major Covid-19 outbreak and there is no evidence that it did, although experts doubt Pyongyang’s claim that the country has not seen a single case of the virus.

Food shortage

“Life has not been easy for us in Pyongyang,” said Matsegora. “Over the months of self-isolation, the stock available on the shelves has decreased to a minimum. It is a challenge to buy even basic products like pasta, flour, vegetable oil and sugar, and there are no decent clothes or shoes. something can be bought, it usually costs three or four times more than before the crisis. “

Matsegora’s comments were surprising, given that North Korea has closer relations with Russia than with almost any other country except China. Although Kim and other North Korean leaders have admitted that the country’s economy is suffering from the virus, they have not admitted that their food supply is under pressure.

WFP spokesman Kun Li said the organization “is not ending operations” in North Korea, but has faced challenges that many industries faced during the pandemic.

“Our work never stopped. Despite the challenges in delivering food aid and supplying supplies due to Covid-19’s containment measures in 2020, we brought limited food and reached more than 500,000 people, including vulnerable women and children, with food and nutritional assistance, “Li said in a statement. “Our work continues through our national team in Pyongyang and the international team on which they are temporarily based.”