By Jean H. Lee
In the final stretch of the long journey from Pyongyang to Moscow, a Russian diplomat loads his family’s possessions onto a wooden cart. His children — the youngest just 3 years old — clamber on top, muffled against the winter cold. Through the biting February cold, the cart inches through the desolate North Korean countryside as the diplomat pushes from behind to help the group of eight reach the Russian border. In all, it’s a journey that takes nearly three days by train, bus and cart.
Amazingly, this is not a scene from 1821. It’s North Korea in 2021.
It’s been more than a year since North Korea shut its borders in January 2020, and has instituted security zones near borders with orders to shoot at infiltrators and strict quarantine measures that have all but stopped the flow of goods into the country.
Germany’s diplomats were the first to leave, suspending operations at their embassy in Pyongyang last March, followed by French officials. The British ambassador left in May, the Swedish ambassador in August. Over the summer, 27 Russians left North Korea, and in recent weeks, the Czech Embassy shuttered its doors.
British Amb. Colin Crooks bid adieu with a tweet; Sweden’s Joachim Bergstrom shared a few last shots of yoga around the capital. But it’s the Russians’ photographs and video last week that best capture the sad and strange way that North Korea’s deepening isolation is playing out on the ground.
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