From the Korea Times:
Kyodo to Open Bureau in North
Kyodo News, a major Japanese news agency, has announced that it is to open a bureau in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang on Sept. 1, the Yonhap News Agency reported Friday.
Kyodo is the second company from countries other than China and Russia, North Korea’s allies, to set up a bureau in the communist state.
APTN, a television arm of the U.S. news wire service the Associated Press, opened one in Pyongyang in May.
“Accurately reporting the actual situation in North Korea for readers in and outside Japan is our mission as a media organization,’’ Kenji Goto, Kyodo’s managing editor, was quoted as saying.
Kyodo said there will be no staff permanently stationed in Pyongyang at the beginning, while the North Korean bureau would be concurrently headed by the chief of its Beijing bureau.
“But when the need arises, reporters will be sent to the North to work from the Pyongyang base, which will have locally recruited staff,’’ it said.
Japan has no diplomatic ties with the North while their talks on normalization have come to a standstill amid disputes over North Korea’s kidnapping of Japanese citizens decades ago.
