North Korea today expelled a BBC journalist for ‘insulting dignity’ of country

North Korea today expelled a BBC journalist it had detained days earlier for allegedly “insulting the dignity” of the authoritarian country, which has invited scores of foreign media for its ongoing ruling party congress.

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes had been scheduled to leave after accompanying a group of Nobel laureates on a North Korea trip. Instead, he was stopped at the airport, detained and questioned.

O Ryong Il, secretary-general of the North’s National Peace Committee, said the journalist’s news coverage distorted facts and “spoke ill of the system and the leadership of the country.” He said Wingfield-Hayes wrote an apology, was being expelled Monday and would never be admitted into the country again.

The BBC says Wingfield-Hayes was detained on Friday along with producer Maria Byrne and cameraman Matthew Goddard, and that all were taken to the Pyongyang airport.

More than 100 foreign journalists are in the capital for North Korea’s first party congress in 36 years, though they have been prevented from actually covering the proceedings and the more than 3,400 delegates.

Officials have kept the foreign media busy with trips around Pyongyang to show them the places it most wants them to see – a maternity hospital with seemingly state-of-the-art equipment, a wire-making factory where managers say salaries and production are both going up, and the humble birthplace of national founder Kim Il Sung, which has been converted into a sort of museum-park with a large “funfair” right next door.