NK opens party congress to foreign journalists

By Choi Sung-jin

North Korea has invited a large number of foreign journalists to cover its Workers’ Party congress, the first in 36 years, a Japanese broadcaster said Wednesday.

“North Korea has invited more than 100 journalists from Japan and the West in time with the rare party congress,” NHK reported. “This seems intended to demonstrate the nuclear and missile developments as the accomplishments of its young leader, Kim Jong-un, and that his grip on power has been firmly established.”

The Japanese journalists, who arrived in Pyongyang Tuesday, toured facilities that commemorate the North’s first weapons factory, NHK said.

A North Korean female tour guide quoted Kim Jong-un as saying at the site last December: “We have become a country that can produce the great sounds of a hydrogen bomb exploding,” which the Japanese reporters interpreted as the North’s intention to push ahead with its nuclear programs, the Japanese broadcaster said.

In the streets of Pyongyang, signs and national flags were hung on every corner and in downtown plazas women gathered in colorful traditional costumes.

The Internet edition of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported that the North Korean capital’s appearance has notably “progressed” since Japanese journalists visited there 12 years ago.

Pyongyang’s Sunan Airport looked like a Japanese provincial airport, and its passenger terminal has brightened up compared with 2004, but the luggage check was as strict as then, the newspaper said.

On their way from the airport to the hotel, the Japanese visitors were surprised at the sharp increase in green lots, taxis and high-rise buildings. “It appeared to be completely different from the city in our memories,” the report said.