Look for more direct news reports out of North Korea now that Associated Press opened a news bureau this week in Pyongyang, becoming the first international news organization with a full-time presence in the communist nation, notes Grumpy Editor.
AP says the action capped nearly a year of discussions.
The move comes less than a month after the death of longtime ruler Kim Jong Il.
The opening of AP offices in the capital mark an “important gesture, particularly because North Korea and the United States have never had formal diplomatic relations,” points out AP.
Now, AP writers and photojournalists will also be allowed to work in North Korea on a regular basis, says the news agency. For decades, it adds, North Korea has remained largely off-limits to international journalists.
Offices are located at state-run Korean Central News Agency’s headquarters in downtown Pyongyang.
The full-service AP bureau --- with words, pictures and video output --- builds on AP video’s six-year-old office in the city.
The independent 165-year-old news cooperative maintains operations in more than 100 countries and employs nearly 2,500 journalists across the world in 300 locations.
What is curiously missing in AP's press release is whether the government or the state-run news agency would have any role in reviewing, overseeing, or supervising AP's work in an way or whether the wire service's journalists would be unrestrained.
Even if Pyongyang won't be muzzling them or looking over their shoulders, that should have been accounted and is an interesting omission.
Posted by: Antonio Prado | January 22, 2012 at 07:25 PM