In the land of the blind, the oneeyed person is king: Social and professional isolation in covering North Korea from Pyongyang or News from Pyongyang: A place for Associated Press?

Finding reliable news and information on North Korea is notoriously difficult. Even when outsiders are able to access the country, there are significant constraints and obstacles to open reporting. This became pronounced during the COVID-19 pandemic when all non-North Koreans were expelled from the country. Against this backdrop, this paper examines the views of prominent foreign correspondents and journalists reporting and specialising on North Korea on Associated Press's engagement in the country. On the basis of twenty longform semi-structured interviews with journalists from mastheads including The New York Times, the Washington Post, Associated Press, Reuters, BBC and NK News, this paper finds that almost all those interviewed who worked from a Pyongyang-based news organisation said that beyond long-term strategic goals of simply maintaining a presence in North Korea, there was next to no benefit to news coverage in having a full-time news bureau in Pyongyang. Furthermore, the decision of Associated Press to operate a bureau in Pyongyang raised serious questions about how much editorial independence they were willing to sacrifice in order to placate the North Korean authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]