Seoul: After state news agencies showed a large number of people without masks, North Korea appeared to have relaxed its strict COVID-19 mask requirement, according to media reports this week.

Long after most other countries abandoned such restrictions, the isolated nation has continued to impose border closures and take other COVID prevention measures.

State-run media in North Korea showed crowds of people at theatres and other locations without masks without making any official announcements. According to analysts with NK News, a Seoul-based website that tracks North Korea, that represented a "stark change" from newspaper coverage going back to September.

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According to unnamed sources, US-based Radio Free Asia reported on Monday that residents, factories, and social groups were informed that the mandate had been lifted as of July 1.

According to the report, authorities loosened the regulations because using used masks and having strict mask control allowed skin and eye infections to spread. As leader Kim Jong Un declared victory over COVID-19 in August of last year, Pyongyang reportedly dropped a requirement for face masks and other social segregation rules, according to the North Korean state news agency KCNA.

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However, a month after the announcement, the government once more instructed people to cover their faces when in public, citing COVID-19 but instead citing the flu and other infectious diseases that can occur in the fall and winter.

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According to South Korea's spy agency, defectors who left North Korea in May did so because of the nation's stringent COVID-19 regulations.
A United Nations report from the previous year criticised North Korea's strict coronavirus controls as making its human rights violations worse.