Update at 16:30 KST: This article has been updated to include further details shared by Russia’s embassy in Pyongyang.

Resident diplomats from the German and Russian embassies as well as the French mission and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in Pyongyang on Monday departed the North Korean capital after over a month under an effective house arrest, NK News understands.

Monday’s flight, first reported to be planned last week, brought some 80 foreigners — including many foreign diplomats and aid workers — out of the country on the North Korean national airliner Air Koryo, Russia’s embassy in the DPRK said in a post on Facebook later in the day.

Also on board, the embassy said, were “Polish, Romanian, Mongolian, and Egyptian diplomats and their families who decided to wait out the quarantine at home.”

“The embassy issued transit visas in a timely manner to 35 representatives of international and national humanitarian organizations accredited in the DPRK, as well as foreign businessmen who found themselves here at the time of the cancellation of international transport links,” it added.

Originally set to depart Pyongyang on Friday, the flight was postponed until after the weekend for reasons that remain unclear. It landed in Vladivostok around 11:00 am local time, publicly-available flight data showed.

Colin Crooks, who serves as British ambassador to North Korea, tweeted that his fellow diplomats had departed their shared compound Monday morning.

“Sad to say farewell this morning to colleagues from German Embassy and French Office #NorthKorea which are closing temporarily,” he said.

Despite the flight, some diplomats have chosen to stay in the DPRK, including British, Czech, and Swedish representatives in the country.

It is the first confirmed flight out of the country in weeks, with North Korean authorities having effectively close off all travel into and out of the country since late January amid fears about the spread of the novel coronavirus (known formally as COVID-19).

Diplomats in the North Korean capital were placed under strict quarantine around the same time, prohibited from leaving their residencies and subject to regular screening for signs of the virus.

Many foreign diplomats had raised complaints about the rules, with Russia’s ambassador to the DPRK last month writing that his colleagues were increasingly unable to properly perform their duties and were effectively cut off from the outside world.

At least one other country with diplomatic representation in Pyongyang also lodged a complaint with DPRK authorities over the treatment of its in-country staff, NK News understands.

Those rules were relaxed last week, though foreign diplomats and aid workers remain banned from restaurants, shops, gyms, and hotels throughout the city.