First Passenger Flight from North Korea Since Pandemic Lands in China

Seoul — For the first time in three years since the coronavirus pandemic interrupted air traffic, isolated North Korea used a passenger aircraft for a scheduled international flight on Tuesday.

Flight JS151 from the state-owned airline Air Koryo landed in Beijing from Pyongyang on Tuesday morning. The departure board at the Chinese airport also showed a return flight from Beijing to Pyongyang for early afternoon on Tuesday, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported from Beijing.

It was initially unclear whether regularly scheduled flights between Pyongyang and Beijing would resume immediately.

"Our understanding is that it was the first flight in three years and seven months," a spokeswoman for South Korea's Unification Ministry said, referring to flight JS151.

Commercial flight operations are seen as provisional. It remains to be seen whether North Korea would subsequently reopen its borders.

The communist leadership in North Korea completely closed the country's borders at the beginning of 2020 because of the pandemic.

The last commercial flight from Pyongyang to Beijing took place on February 1, 2020. Since last year, cargo train traffic between North Korea and China has slowly increased.

A bus from North Korea recently travelled to China with a group of athletes, Yonhap reported. From there, they planned to travel to Kazakhstan to take part in a Taekwondo competition.

In July, government delegations from China and Russia visited the North Korean capital Pyongyang.

©2023 dpa GmbH. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.