The North Korean athletes who participated in the Winter Paralympics for the first time departed Pyeongchang on Thursday after concluding all of their events.

Sit skiers Ma Yu Chol and Kim Jong Hyon were among the 24-member delegation who returned home before Sunday's closing ceremony for reasons which were not immediately clear.

Both Ma, 27, and Kim, 17, competed in two cross-country skiing events, the men's 15-kilometer and the 1.1-km sprint, as wildcard entries. They came in second-from-last and last among the 27 skiers who finished the 15-km event, and were knocked out in qualifying for the sprint.

Delegation members smiled as they were seen off by South Koreans onto buses at the Paralympic Village but did not take questions from reporters.

Their subdued presence here was in stark contrast to the Olympics, where North Korea's colorful cheering squad put on a spectacle and leader Kim Jong Un's sister Kim Yo Jong made a big impression with her "smile diplomacy."

An early sign that things would be different came when Pyongyang decided not to send the cheering squad or musicians to the Paralympics, cutting the delegation down to a sixth of the initially planned size.

The two Koreas also decided not to march together under the unification flag at last week's opening ceremony after Pyongyang voiced its disapproval of the flag depicting the Korean Peninsula without a group of disputed islets in the Sea of Japan.