Detained and interrogated for 10 hours in North Korea

The BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes was last week expelled from North Korea and forced to apologise for his reporting. He was held incommunicado for 10 hours and interrogated. Here he gives his first account of what happened.


After a week in Asian country i used to be over able to return. The trip, to cover a visit to national capital by a delegation of 3 Alfred Nobel laureates, had been exhausting and stressful.
I couldn't move anyplace in national capital while not a team of 5 minders following my each step. At night the BBC team was confined to an hot villa in an exceedingly guarded compound. We'd fallen out with pretty much everybody. Our North Korean minders were now overtly hostile.
We were all wanting forward to a cold brewage and a decent night's sleep in Beijing.
For some reason the feminine immigration officer at Pyongyang field was taking a really lasting with my passport. By the time she finally stamped it everybody else had cleared security and gone to the gate. It felt odd, but I wasn't right away afraid.
Then a North Korean border guard called Maine over - in his hand, my digital recorder.
"We need to check this," he said inform down a passageway.
In a back room another border guard was making an attempt to open the files from my recorder on a laptop pc.
"What is the problem?" I asked. "There's nothing on that card."
"Just wait," he responded.
"I can't wait," I said. "I have to get on my flight to Beijing."
"The flight is already gone," the border guard said wanting straight at Maine. "You will not be planning to Beijing."
Now my sense of alarm was rising quick.
"My God," I thought. "This is real. My flight is leaving and I am being left behind in North Korea!"Actually I wasn't. At that moment my colleagues Maria Byrne and Matthew Goddard were refusing to board the plane, shouting at the North Korean guards who were making an attempt to push them on board.
But I knew none of this. I felt very alone.

Two of our previous minders currently appeared at the door.
"We are taking you to meet with the relevant organs," they proclaimed. "All will become clear."
I was marched to a waiting car and place within the back, a minder on either facet.

As we drove through the nearly empty streets of national capital no-one spoke. Looking at the drab concrete living accommodations blocks, I contemplated my situation. Even in North Korea you do not detain a visiting journalist unless it's been approved from high. I thought about yankee university student Otto Warmbier, sentenced to 15 years' exhausting labour for stealing a info banner from his national capital building. Would I be the next to be paraded on state TV?