North Korea has sent a delegation to the ongoing 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) climate summit in Dubai, continuing to engage on environmental issues even though it has yet to fully normalize diplomatic activities post-pandemic.

A livestream of Thursday’s opening session briefly showed a DPRK representative seated in the audience, and NK News analysis indicates the North Korean official seen in the video is Pang Kwang Hyok, the country’s deputy permanent representative to the U.N. in Geneva.

North Korea also attended last year’s COP27 summit in Egypt and 2021’s COP26 summitin Glasgow, despite withdrawing from engagement with the