North Korea has cleared an apparent COVID-19-related quarantine area at the Pyongyang International Airport runway, less than two months after it filled up with an emergency shipment of “medicines” from China, according to satellite imagery.

The move suggests items shipped in from China and apparently quarantined at the airport were of a higher priority than items undergoing a longer quarantine period of around three months near the Chinese border.

It also calls into question possible inconsistencies in or changes to the DPRK’s COVID-19 policies. North Korean authorities maintain the virus can survive attached to inanimate objects and even dust carried into the country by animals, water and wind.

Planet Labs imagery shows three groups of shipping containers disappeared from an area on a rarely used section of the Pyongyang airport’s northern runway between July 5 and 10. The containers first appeared there on May 16 just before three Air Koryo Il-76 cargo planes arrived with a shipment of what sources told NK News were COVID-19 supplies and what South Korean outlets reported were specifically “medicines.”

The three planes were released from apparent quarantine just days before the 20 or so containers were removed from the runway. Their trip to Shenyang was the first time North Korean planes were confirmed to have traveled abroad since North Korea closed its borders in Jan. 2021.

High-resolution satellite imagery shows frequent activity around the shipping containers starting in late May or around a week after they arrived, including what appears to be small items being spread out and moved around the runway before disappearing between June 12 and 17. 

It is possible that at least some of the goods completed quarantine at that time and that only empty containers were finally removed this month. 

The frequent activity indicates personnel visited the quarantine site and handled goods there almost daily, despite there being no visible security perimeters installed there.

This is in contrast to the Uiju disinfection center near the Chinese border, where North Korean authorities permanently shut down an entire airport and created multiple new layers of heavy perimeter security to protect goods under quarantine on the runway, presumably keeping control over workers stationed there as well.

Authorities may have made an exception to allow COVID-19 supplies to pass through an expedited quarantine process at the Pyongyang airport runway site, possibly because they were deemed important items for a privileged group of recipients. 

It already appeared that authorities had made an exception to allow the cargo planes to fly across the border and back without preparing new infrastructure ahead of time to receive and disinfect the planes and supplies like at the Uiju facilities.

Meanwhile, Planet Labs imagery shows groups of goods continuing to be moved around in recent days at the Uiju disinfection center and at a possible outgoing distribution center connected to the site. There are no signs of train shipments resuming from China after Beijing and Pyongyang suspended the trade route in late April. 

Edited by Arius Derr