North Korea has sent a delegation to the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) climate summit that kicked off in Brazil on Monday, continuing the country’s focus on global environmental diplomacy even as it restricts political engagement to its closest partners.

A livestream of Thursday’s opening plenum captured what appeared to be two DPRK representatives in the audience, and a separate video from a pre-summit event showed a vacant table bearing a North Korean flag.

The stream’s brief glimpses of the officials did not yield clear information about their identity, and the telltale badges of former leaders that North Korean