The Britain temporarily closed its embassy in North Korea and evacuated all its diplomats, announced its ambassador Thursday, and this because of the drastic controls put in place at its borders by Pyongyang to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
The North, which took the initiative to close its borders very early, claims to have identified no case of Covid-19 on its soil, even though the epidemic born at the end of 2019 in its Chinese neighbor has spread to the almost all countries of the globe.
Closing the embassy is a temporary measure, said a spokesman for the Foreign Office. It was taken because Pyongyang decided to “Restrictions on entry into his country which made it impossible to rotate our staff and maintain the operations of the embassy”, according to him. “The British Embassy in Pyongyang temporarily closed on May 27, 2020 and all diplomatic staff have left the DPRK for the time being”said Ambassador Colin Crooks in a tweet, referring to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Maintenance of diplomatic relations
North Korea’s NK News website reports that British diplomats crossed the border into China on Wednesday.
London plans to maintain diplomatic ties with the North and “Will seek to restore its presence in Pyongyang as soon as it is possible to do so”, said the Foreign Office.
From the onset of the epidemic, Pyongyang had imposed drastic quarantines on all foreigners, including an almost total confinement in their place of residence, measures that the Russian ambassador, Alexandre Matsegora, had qualified as “Terrible for morale”.
These measures were later relaxed and dozens of diplomats and other foreigners were allowed to leave the country in March. Several diplomatic missions in Pyongyang have closed, such as the German Embassy or the French Cooperation Office. Paris has no diplomatic relationship with North Korea.
Hundreds of foreigners nonetheless remain in North Korea.
Experts say it is highly unlikely that North Korea has escaped the virus. A large-scale epidemic could be catastrophic in a country with notoriously poor health infrastructure.
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