SEOUL – North Korea appeared to have eased a strict Covid-19 mask mandate, media reports said this week, after state news agencies showed many people maskless.

The isolated country has maintained border lockdowns and other anti-Covid-19 measures long after most other nations ditched such restrictions.

North Korean state television and newspapers did not make any official announcement, but showed crowds of people at theatres and other locations without masks.

That was a “stark change” compared with newspaper coverage dating back to September 2022, according to analysts with NK News, a Seoul-based site that monitors North Korea.

Residents, factories and social groups were told that the mandate was lifted as at July 1, US-based Radio Free Asia (RFA) said on Monday, citing unnamed sources.

The report said the authorities had eased the mandates because wearing used masks and strict mask control had led to the spread of skin and eye infections.

In August 2022, North Korean state news agency KCNA said Pyongyang had dropped a face mask mandate along with other social distancing rules as leader Kim Jong Un declared victory over Covid-19.

But one month after the announcement, the authorities ordered citizens to wear masks in public again, citing flu and infectious diseases that can occur during fall and winter, but without specifying Covid-19.

South Korea’s spy agency has said defectors who fled North Korea in May decided to do so because of the country’s strict Covid-19 controls.

North Korea’s strict coronavirus curbs have also been criticised by a United Nations report in 2022 as worsening its human rights violations. REUTERS