North Korea has said it would skip next month's Beijing Olympics because of the COVID-19 pandemic and "hostile forces' moves".
However, the statement was largely redundant since the country has already been banned from the Games by the IOC.
In September, the International Olympic Committee suspended North Korea into 2022 for refusing to send a team to the Tokyo Summer Games, citing the pandemic.
IOC President Thomas Bach said at the time that individual athletes from North Korea who qualify to compete in Beijing could still be accepted, but there is no word of that happening.
On Friday, North Korea's state media said its Olympic Committee and Sport Ministry sent a letter to their Chinese counterparts to formally notify its last major ally and economic pipeline that it cannot attend the Olympics, which begin on 4 February.
"We could not take part in the Olympics due to the hostile forces' moves and the worldwide pandemic," the letter said, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.
The KCNA dispatch did not elaborate on what the hostile forces are.
But Cheong Seong-Chang, an analyst at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea, said they likely refer to the IOC, or the US, France and Britain, which North Korea believes is behind the IOC suspension.
Despite the IOC decision, there was still hope in Seoul and elsewhere that the Games could serve as a venue for reconciliation between the rival Koreas with the support of the IOC.
In the 2018 Winter Games held in Pyeongchang, South Korea, athletes from the rival countries marched together in the opening ceremony and fielded a single team in women's ice hockey.
Such hopes were setback last week when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to bolster his armed forces and retain the strict virus restrictions but did not disclose any new policies toward Washington and Seoul during a key political conference.
On Wednesday, North Korea conducted what it called a hypersonic missile test in its first weapons test in two months.
"There is no reason for Kim Jong Un to take part in the Beijing Olympics and South Korea's push for a political declaration to end the Korean War on the occasion of the Olympics has fizzed," Mr Cheong said.
North Korea has maintained one of the world's toughest restrictions to guard against COVID-19, including two years of border shutdowns.
The country has been skipping major international sports events, including Olympic preliminary events, since the pandemic began.
