A planned flight intended to take diplomats stranded in the North Korean capital to Vladivostok later this week has been postponed and is expected to instead take place next Monday, multiple sources told NK News.

The flight, confirmed by DPRK authorities earlier in the week, was intended to bring some 60 people — among them many foreign diplomats — out of the country on the North Korean national airliner Air Koryo.

Many of those diplomats have now been under effective house arrest in the North Korean capital for over a month, amid strict new quarantine rules imposed by DPRK authorities intended to stem a potential outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in the country’s territory.

Those quarantine rules were relaxed earlier this week, though foreign diplomats and aid workers remain banned from restaurants, shops, gyms, and hotels throughout the city, and had planned to depart Pyongyang this week as multiple embassies in the DPRK have temporarily shuttered.

Sources on Thursday told NK News the flight has been postponed until next week, with it now set to go-ahead on Monday.

This delay, one source said, was due to the Russian authorities’ continued refusal to grant the flight the green light.

Neither the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) nor officials at Vladivostok Airport responded to repeated requests for a response to those claims. Russia’s embassy in Pyongyang declined to comment.

Diplomats in the DPRK capital have in recent days been celebrating the end of the 30-day quarantine period, with Swedish ambassador to North Korea Joachim Bergström on Twitter saying he had “never been happier” to stand in Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Square.

Others have been less optimistic, given the North Korean Vice Minister of Public Health’s comments last week that the DPRK will maintain an effective ban on travel until a cure for the virus is found.

Speaking to NK News earlier this week, one source in Pyongyang said they feared restrictions could now mean they remain stuck in the city “for several months.”

Edited by James Fretwell