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An image from the BBC’s website of reporter Rupert Wingfield-Hayes at Kim Il Sung University in North Korea on May 4.

On May 9, North Korea expelled a BBC correspondent for what it claimed were distorted and fabricated reports about the situation in the North, but it did not go into details about what reports were at issue.

There is speculation that an unflattering description of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un contained in a report that the correspondent, named Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, made from Pyongyang on Apr. 29 was probably what bothered North Korea.

O Ryong-il, chairman of the National Peace Committee of Korea, was quoted by foreign correspondents as saying during a press conference held in Pyongyang on Monday that Wingfield-Hayes “had kept scheming to distort and fabricate the situation in North Korea in a manner that was not suitable given his position as a journalist. He criticized the customs of the republic and violated its legal order.”

“There were conflicting views and concerns about what Wingfield-Hayes said in his reports,” said another BBC correspondent on the ground in Pyongyang. This correspondent added that Wingfield-Hayes had raised questions about the authenticity of a children’s hospital in Pyongyang that he had visited with several Nobel Laureates.

In a May 2 report from Pyongyang, Wingfield-Hayes noted that his minders called Kim Jong-un “The Great Leader Marshal Kim Jong-un.”

“What exactly he’s done to deserve the title Marshal is hard to say. On state TV the young ruler seems to spend a lot of time sitting in a large chair watching artillery firing at mountainsides,” Kim said.

“The hospital is virtually empty. In one room, a group of tiny pyjama-clad children are exercising on gym equipment designed for adults,” Wingfield-Hayes said after visiting the children‘s hospital in Pyongyang. “They look bemused, and so are we.”

Wingfield-Hayes also reported that Prince Albert of Lichtenstein told his interpreter that the people in the hospital did not look like real doctors. “Can we find some real doctors for the Nobel laureates to talk to?” the correspondent quoted Prince Albert as saying. Wingfield-Hayes said that, wherever he went, he did not see anyone who was real.

“The Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il is dead, replaced by his corpulent and unpredictable son Kim Jong-un,” Wingfield-Hayes said in a report on Apr. 30.

During the press conference on May 9, another BBC correspondent asked what the world would think about North Korea detaining and punishing a reporter for saying things it did not agree with. At this, the North Korean official left the room without responding.

Wingfield-Hayes’s visit to North Korea had nothing to do with the 7th Congress of the Korean Workers’ Party. Instead, he had accompanied Prince Alfred of Liechtenstein, chairman of the Advisory Board of the International Peace Foundation, and three Nobel Laureates when they visited the North on Apr. 29 for the purpose of academic exchange.

Japanese newspapers reported with some irritation that North Korea had brought over foreign correspondents ostensibly to cover the party congress but had given them tours of facilities touting the achievements of Kim Jong-un while preventing them from reporting on the congress itself.

“North Korea has been choosing hospitals and technological facilities to show foreign correspondents while refusing to allow them to cover the party congress for the second day in a row. The North is flaunting its independence and the unity of its citizens despite the economic sanctions imposed by the international community,” the Nihon Keizai Shinbun said in a May 8 report from Pyongyang.

Based on the facilities that North Korea made available to foreign correspondents, it is possible to infer how North Korea wants to present itself to the outside world.

North Korea showed reporters a cluster of high-rise buildings on Mirae (“Future”) Scientists Street in Pyongyang on May 5, Pyongyang’s 326 Electric Cable Factory on May 6, and the Pyongyang Maternity Hospital and the Sci-Tech Complex on May 7. The Sci-Tech Complex was displaying an enormous model of the Eunha-3, which North Korea put into orbit in Dec. 2012, the newspaper reported.

“As North Korea works to develop nuclear weapons, this facility has become a symbol of the technological development to which Kim Jong-un has been devoting his attention,” the Nihon Keizai Shinbun said.

By Hwang Sang-cheol, staff reporter and Gil Yun-hyung, Tokyo correspondent

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]