Several European embassies and missions based in North Korea will temporarily close their offices, NK Pro has learned, amid growing concern about Pyongyang’s approach to battling the novel coronavirus.

The missions are likely to close next week when state airline Air Koryo is expected to fly at least one flight to bring foreigners currently stranded in Pyongyang to neighboring Vladivostok, in Russia.

As a result of the departures, Germany, France, and Switzerland will temporarily close their missions, multiple informed sources said, flying out with a number of other ex-pats who have been living under severe foreigner quarantine measures since early February.

“I think this is unprecedented,” said John Everard, former UK Ambassador to DPRK. “The nearest we came to this was during the SARS epidemic when some embassy staff were required to stay in a hotel outside Pyongyang.”

“Apart from anything else, leaving an embassy in Pyongyang unstaffed for any time raises complex security issues.”

Procedures for the French and Swiss could, therefore, be easier than Germany, he indicated.

“The French maintain a cultural office (they have no formal diplomatic relations with the DPRK) and the Swiss maintain an aid office,” he said. “Neither mission maintains a classified area that needs protection.”

Faced with an ex-pat community increasingly frustrated by imposing quarantine measures – which restrict movement outside residences and offices – North Korean authorities appear to have scheduled a special Air Koryo flight to Vladivostok next week.

The flight will transport diplomatic staff and humanitarian workers no longer willing to live under quarantine measures which effectively undermine the principal purpose of maintaining an on-the-ground presence inside North Korea.

The Vladivostok flight comes after North Korean authorities rejected a British government request to fly a chartered aircraft to the country for support and evacuation purposes last week.

The flight had been proposed with the EU in order to bring supplies into the country and fly some effectively stranded by North Korea’s draconian response to the virus out.

North Korea’s response to containing the virus has had some severe implications for those among the ex-pat community.

NK Pro understands that some embassies have been running out of basics, including cash, while foreigners officially scheduled to leave the country weeks ago remaining prohibited from leaving the country.

Faced with growing problems, however, Everard said it would be unlikely that larger embassies would be impacted by the virus.

“It is is unlikely that the larger embassies on such as the Chinese or Russian embassy, will evacuate,” he said. “They are so big that evacuation would be a major operation.”

The South Korea-based outlet Daily NK said in early February that the virus was already present in North Korea, having killed several people in the DPRK-PRC border city of Sinuiju.

Though North Korea continues to claim the country is virus-free, NK Pro understands from multiple sources that the virus is said to have spread to the city and that it is consequently cordoned off from the rest of the country.

Edited by Oliver Hotham