Kyodo News, Japan's major news agency, said Thursday it will open a bureau in Pyongyang on Sept. 1, the first Japanese news organization to establish a bureau in North Korea.
"Accurately reporting the actual situation in North Korea for readers in and outside Japan is our mission as a media organization," reckoned Kenji Goto, managing editor of Kyodo's news department.
The bureau chief of Kyodo's China General Bureau will concurrently serve as head of the Pyongyang office.
There will be no full-time staff dispatched from Japan at the beginning at the Pyongyang base, which will have locally recruited staff. But if needed, reporters will be sent to the North from other areas.