SEOUL (Reuters) -&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;appeared to have eased a strict&nbsp;COVID-19&nbsp;mask&nbsp;mandate, media&nbsp;reports&nbsp;said this week, after state news agencies showed many people&nbsp;maskless.
The isolated country has maintained border lockdowns and other anti-COVID&nbsp;measures long after most other nations ditched such restrictions.
North&nbsp;Korean state television and newspapers did not make any official announcement, but showed crowds of people at theatres and other locations without&nbsp;masks.
That was a "stark change" compared to newspaper coverage dating back to September, according to analysts with NK News, a Seoul-based site that monitors&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korea.
Residents, factories and social groups were told that the&nbsp;mandate&nbsp;was&nbsp;lifted as of July 1, U.S.-based Radio Free Asia (RFA) said on Monday, citing unnamed sources.
The report said authorities had eased the&nbsp;mandates because wearing used&nbsp;masks and strict&nbsp;mask&nbsp;control had led to the spread of skin and eye infections.
Last August,&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korean state news agency KCNA said Pyongyang had dropped a face&nbsp;mask&nbsp;mandate&nbsp;along with other social distancing rules as leader Kim Jong Un declared victory over&nbsp;COVID-19.
But one month after the announcement, the authorities ordered citizens to wear&nbsp;masks in public again, citing flu and infectious diseases that can occur during fall and winter, but without specifying&nbsp;COVID-19.
South&nbsp;Korea's spy agency has said defectors who fled&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;in May decided to do so because of the country's strict&nbsp;COVID-19 controls.
North&nbsp;Korea's strict coronavirus curbs have also been criticized by a United Nations report last year as worsening its human rights violations.
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(Reporting by Hyunsu Yim; Editing by Josh Smith and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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North Korea appears to lift COVID mask mandate, reports say