PYONGYANG, Korea, Democratic People’s Republic Of – North Korea on Monday was expelling a BBC journalist it had detained days earlier for allegedly “insulting the dignity” of the authoritarian country, which has invited scores of foreign media for its ongoing ruling party congress.
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She added: “This is how the North Korean officials are choosing to represent this incident – they are saying they are expelling this correspondent from the country for what they term “disrespectful reporting”.
“When he reached the airport on Friday, he was separated from the rest of his team, prevented from boarding that flight, taken to a hotel and interrogated by the security bureau here in Pyongyang”, another BBC reporter, John Sudworth, said in a report.
Wingfield-Hayes and his team were in the country with three Nobel Laureates on a trip organized by the Vienna-based International Peace Foundation (IPF) ahead of the Workers’ Party Congress, along with Prince Alfred of Liechtenstein, who chairs the IPF’s advisory board.
The three BBC staff are believed to have been escorted to Pyongyang airport by their government minders on Monday and are expected to fly to Beijing.
Mr Wingfield-Hayes was questioned for eight hours by North Korean officials and made to sign a statement.
The North Korean leadership was displeased with their reports highlighting aspects of life in the capital.
During their interrogation, the North Korean authorities had made it very clear to Wingfield-Hayes that they saw the content of his reporting as a “very, very serious issue”, Sudworth said.
“What exactly (Kim Jong Un has) done to deserve the title Marshal is hard to say”.
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North Korea granted visas to 128 journalists from 12 countries. The leader, who has been in power since his father’s death in late 2011, called for a greater focus on factory automation, mechanizing agriculture and increasing coal output.
