North Korea’s Vice Minister of External Economic Affairs departed Pyongyang for Moscow over the weekend, Russia’s embassy in the DPRK reported, where he is expected to hold bilateral talks with local counterparts on “topical issues of bilateral cooperation.”

In a post on Saturday, the embassy reported that Ri Kwang Gun had been escorted to the airport by Russian chargé d’affaires Alexander Vostrikov.

Ri’s meetings this week in Moscow, it continued, would serve as a follow-up to a visit to the DPRK by Russia’s Ministry for the Development of the Far East (MDFE) Alexander Kozlov last month.

Those talks served as a follow-up