The BBC said Wingfield-Hayes was detained on Friday along with producer Maria Byrne and cameraman Matthew Goddard, and that all were taken to the Pyongyang airport.
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North Korea’s first ruling party congress for almost 40 years formally adopted leader Kim Jong-Un’s policy of developing the country’s nuclear arsenal in tandem with the economy, state media said today.
“The idea that somebody would be prevented from leaving the country and put under this kind of pressure simply because the North Korean authorities disagree with the content of his reporting…is not just for me, as one of his colleagues, but for other journalists here, of deep concern”, he said. He said they were ordered to delete the footage or they would not be allowed to leave the university campus where they were filming.
Mr Wingfield-Hayes was interrogated for eight hours in a hotel and made to sign a statement of apology by North Korean officials before he was released in the early hours of Saturday.
An interrogator told Mr Wingfield-Hayes he had been the official to prosecute Kenneth Bae – a Korean-American missionary who was sentenced to 15 years’ hard labour in the country.
“We think that if the BBC is a genuine, true, worldwide media organization you should be acting in such a way as to respect the law and system in the country, and you must admit your mistakes”. And in true Communist form, the more than 100 journalists invited to the event, only 30 were permitted to attend, allowing for potential control of the news leaving the event.
Kim told the meeting that the period since the last Workers’ Party congress was an “unprecedentedly grim struggle” in North Korea’s long history and years of glorious victory which witnessed great changes. Wingfield-Hayes had been in town ahead of the congress to cover the visit of a group of Nobel laureates.
BBC reporter Rupert Wingfield-Hayes speaks to journalists after arriving at the global airport in Beijing on May 9, 2016.
“We will consistently take hold on the strategic line of simultaneously pushing forward the economic construction and the building of nuclear force and boost self-defensive nuclear force both in quality and quantity as long as the imperialists persist in their nuclear threat and arbitrary practices”, KCNA said, citing the congress.
Koh, who is now vice head of the South s state-run Institute for National Security Strategy, said the rarity of the party congress conferred real authority on the new role.
North Korean officials go to great lengths to present a sanitized version of reality for foreign journalists.
While Kim proposed military talks with the South and suggested that misunderstanding and mistrust between the two could be resolved through talks, the South Korean government brushed this off as “lacking sincerity”, citing the North’s insistence on nuclear weapons.
“We have made a decision to expel the BBC’s Tokyo 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”.
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Otherwise, they were taken to showcase sites, such as a maternity hospital, an electric cable plant and a children’s centre.
