North Korea has resumed visits to Mount Baekdu as it seeks to unite the nation in coping with international sanctions and the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

The state-run Korean Central News Agency(KCNA) said on Tuesday that the summer season's first group left Pyongyang for the revolutionary battlefields at Mount Baekdu on Friday.

Pyongyang promotes Mount Baekdu as the site of the anti-Japanese movement led by founder Kim Il-sung.

Last year, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visited the symbolically important mountain twice as Pyongyang and Washington ramped up pressure on each other to make more concessions in denuclearization talks.

While visits to Mount Baekdu were exempt from the North's strict quarantine, they were temporarily suspended during the rice planting season.