Tuesday, August 22, 2023

First foreign flight for North Korean airline after the collapse of the Soviet Union

The state airline of North Korea has successfully completed its first overseas flight since the epidemic began.

Flight JS151, operated by Air Koryo, took off from Pyongyang early on Tuesday morning and arrived at Beijing Capital Airport at 9:16 local time, which corresponds to 01:16 GMT, according to data provided by the real-time flight tracking service Flightradar24.

It is unknown who was on board the JS151 or how many people it was transporting at this time.

According to Koryo Tours, a travel firm, the route between Pyongyang and Beijing has been reopened so that North Koreans can travel back home.

Flightradar24 reports that flight JS151 was operated by a Tupolev Tu-204 aircraft, which has the capacity to accommodate a maximum of 210 passengers.

It is unknown how many people were on board the return flight, JS152, which was scheduled to depart from Beijing for Pyongyang at 13:05 local time.

According to Kyodo News, the check-in booth for Air Koryo at the Beijing airport was completely crowded with passengers who were wearing North Korean flag pins on their chests and dragging luggage carts full of belongings.

More than three and a half years after they were halted because to Covid border controls, Air Koryo flights to Beijing were authorized to resume on Monday, according to the Chinese foreign ministry, which claimed it has cleared the restart of the flights.

It was only lately that Pyongyang restarted some limited international passenger transit.

This past week, a group of North Korean athletes made their way across the border into China on their route to compete in the global championships for Taekwondo in Kazakhstan, which is located nearby.

The capital of North Korea was also visited by delegations from Russia and China in July to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the armistice that ended the Korean War. These delegations were the first known foreign organizations to be invited to the country since the year 2020.

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