Who Is Rupert Wingfield-Hayes and Why Has He Been Expelled From North Korea?

Posted by Martina Birk on Saturday, June 15, 2024

BBC correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes was detained along with a producer and cameraman on Friday as they were about to leave North Korea, the corporation said.

The team, including producer Maria Byrne and cameraman Matthew Goddard, was questioned for eight hours and held over the weekend. They have been escorted to Pyongyang airport by their government minders and are expected to fly to Beijing on Monday.

Who is Rupert Wingfield-Hayes?

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes is an English journalist and the BBC's Tokyo correspondent.

He has worked for the BBC since 1999. He was the BBC Beijing correspondent from 2000 to 2006. In 2007 he moved to be the BBC Moscow correspondent and in 2010 he was appointed the BBC Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem. During his time in the Middle East he covered the revolution in Tunisia, the fall of Mubarak in Egypt and the Libyan civil war.

During the Tahrir Square protests he was detained in Cairo, by the secret police. He was the first BBC correspondent to enter Tripoli after the fall of Muammar el-Qaddafi and the convoy he was travelling in was ambushed by pro-Qaddafi militia during the fighting in Tripoli.

On October 10, 2012, the BBC announced the appointment of Wingfield-Hayes as its Tokyo correspondent. He has been based in the Tokyo bureau since 2012, reporting across the BBC's news services, including the BBC's international news channel, BBC World News, in addition to news services within the U.K.

In November 2013, Wingfield-Hayes was one of the first foreign journalists into Tacloban, Philippines after it was struck by Typhoon Haiyan.

What was he doing in North Korea?

Wingfield-Hayes was not among the dozens of foreign media organisations covering the Workers party's first congress in 36 years, but instead had covered an earlier trip of Nobel laureates and had been scheduled to leave on Friday.

Why has he been expelled?

North Korea says is it removing Wingfield-Hayes for allegedly "insulting the dignity" of the authoritarian country.

Reports said that North Korean officials were unhappy about Wingfield-Hayes's coverage of a visit to a children's hospital in Pyongyang, along with Nobel Prize laureates.

In the report, which aired last week, Wingfield-Hayes said the patients at the hospital looked "remarkably well, and there isn't a real doctor in sight."

He said: "Everything we see looks like a set-up.

"This country appears obsessed with portraying an image of strength and perfection.

"The level of control and nervousness we have experienced betrays the weakness and insecurity that lies beneath."

Breaking - Our man in North Korea is detained & questioned for 8 hours. Rupert Wingfield-Hayes & his team to be expelled from the country

— Nick Robinson (@bbcnickrobinson) May 9, 2016

What was the reaction?

A BBC spokesman said: "We are very disappointed that our reporter Rupert Wingfield-Hayes and his team have been deported from North Korea after the government took offence at material he had filed.

"Four BBC staff, who were invited to cover the Workers Party Congress, remain in North Korea and we expect them to be allowed to continue their reporting."

O Ryong-il, secretary-general of the North's National Peace Committee, said that Wingfield-Hayes' news coverage distorted facts and "spoke ill of the system and the leadership of the country."

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