“We have made a decision to expel the Tokyo BBC correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes from the territory of the DPRK and we are going to never admit him again into the country for any report”, O Ryong Il, Secretary General of the DPRK National Peace Committee said at the press conference, using an acronym for the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name.
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Our correspondent, producer Maria Byrne and cameraman Matthew Goddard were stopped by officials on Friday as they were about to leave North Korea.
Mr Wingfield-Hayes was questioned for eight hours by North Korean officials and made to sign a statement.
“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.
CNN’s Will Ripley, who is in Pyongyang for the Seventh Congress of the ruling Korean Workers’ Party, as was Wingfield-Hayes, reported the news.
He said the North Korean leadership was displeased with their reports.
There are now around 130 foreign journalists in Pyongyang – all of whom were ostensibly invited to cover what is the first Workers’ Party congress to be held for more than 35 years.
The journalists were also taken for a ride on a new train, purportedly developed in North Korea.
Walking a fine balance between the two, he said the North is willing to develop friendly relations even with countries that had in the past been hostile toward it – a possible overture to the United States.
In his first article on the trip, Wingfield-Hayes said he was “hoping for any chance to see North Korea “off script”, and added that on a previous visit to Pyongyang, “I tried to sneak out to see a bit of Pyongyang street life…a soldier jumped out of the bushes and ordered me to turn around”.
The congress is expected to last for a few more days.
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(AP Photo/Wong Maye-E). North Korean women carrying decorative flowers walk from the Kim Il Sung Square after rehearsing for a parade Sunday, May 8, 2016, in Pyongyang, North Korea.
