North Korea's coronavirus restrictions left a group of Russian diplomats and their families using a hand-pushed trolley to leave the hermit state.
Pyongyang's strict anti-coronavirus measures include blocking most forms of passenger transport across the border and severely restricted movement inside the country.
The group of eight, which included a three-year-old child, were forced to travel 32 hours by train and two hours by bus from Pyongyang to reach the Russian border.
Photos and video released by Russian's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, show the group then crossing the border on foot after loading their luggage onto a trolley on the train tracks.
Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a post on social media: "Since the borders have been closed for more than a year and passenger traffic has been stopped, it took a long and difficult journey to get home."
Embassy third secretary Vladislav Sorokin was the trolley's "engine", the ministry said, by pushing it for more than half a mile including across a rail bridge over the Tumen River, which divides the two countries.
The group were then met at a border station on the Russian side by ministry officials before travelling by bus to Vladivostok airport.
The number of foreign diplomats in North Korea has dwindled in the last year, with many Western embassies closing, citing the bans on rotating staff.
North Korea has still not confirmed any coronavirus infections since the start of the pandemic.
But cases there cannot be ruled out, according to South Korea's National Intelligence Service, as the country had active trade and people-to-people exchanges with China before closing the border in early 2020.
It comes after North Korean hackers allegedly tried to steal Covid vaccine technology by hacking into Pfizer computers.
If the attempt had been successful, experts believe Kim Jong-un's despot regime would have tried to sell the information rather than use it to develop its own jabs.
