Foreign Media Arrive in N. Korea to Cover Nuke Site Destruction

May 22, 2018

Seoul- A group of some 20 journalists, mainly from U.S. and Chinese news organizations, entered North Korea on Tuesday to report on the country's planned destruction of its nuclear test site in Punggye-ri.

Departing from Beijing Capital International Airport aboard a chartered airplane of North Korea's state-run Air Koryo earlier the same day, the journalists arrived at Kalma Airport in the eastern city of Wonsan.

They are scheduled to take a special train to travel to the test site in the northeast of the country.

According to a North Korean announcement, Pyongyang will close the test site by blowing up all tunnels, removing facilities and equipment and withdrawing security guards and researchers between Wednesday and Friday, depending on weather conditions.

After covering those events, the foreign journalists will go to Wonsan, again, to report from a press center to be set up in the city. They are expected to leave North Korea on Saturday or Sunday.

Satellite images posted on 38 North, a U.S. website providing analysis of North Korea, on May 15 showed steady progress of preparatory work for the test site closure.

North Korea initially invited reporters from the United States, China, Russia, Britain and South Korea.

But it refused to accept the list of South Korean reporters, probably to protest the South Korean military's joint drills with U.S. forces ending on Friday, observers said.

It was regrettable that South Korean reporters could not make the trip, South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon said Tuesday.

At the Beijing airport, a CNN television reporter denied that the U.S. news organization paid North Korea so it could cover the destruction of the nuclear test site, saying it was simply speculation that Pyongyang demanded a large sum of money. Jiji Press