Lil' Kim & Koizumi avoid pesty alien/gaijin reporters
Topic: Media
Foreign Reporters Battle Kantei [Prime Minister's office] for NK Access
July 5, 2004, The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan
Pyongyang II was a sequel the foreign media in Japan didn't want.
On Monday, May 17, the Prime Minister's office (Kantei) told the Foreign Press in Japan (FPIJ) that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi would be going to Pyongyang on Saturday, May 22. Two of 27 media seats on the PM's plane were for foreign reporters...losing wire services -- Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse -- the news brought a flurry of scathing e-mails.
..."In normal emergencies, reporters rent planes. Why don't we charter a plane, call it Koizumi's press plane, and tag along?" suggested the New York Times' Jim Brooke in an e-mail. "I realize [the] Gaimusho and North Korea are two daunting bureaucracies...