Today the Associated Press opened the first fully-operated news bureau in North Korea from a Western news organisation, a press release announced. The international news wire's office in Pyongyang will be the first to offer, with a full-time staff, a video and text coverage from the country. The plan to open the bureau was announced last June.

According to the Guardian, the opening arrives after months of discussions with the Korea Central News Agency, inside which the new office will be based, and it was originally planned to open last December but it has been postponed after the death of leader Kim Jong-il.

The agency already had a video office in North Korea six years ago through its London-based Associated Press Television News (APTN) and it has been the only independent foreign media news agency operating in North Korea till now, as reported on the APTN website.

North Korea, run by the last surviving Stalinist regime, is among the countries with the most tightly state controlled news environment. This leads to questions about how effectively the news wire will be able to freely do its job.

North Korea is ranked 177 out of 178 on the 2010 Press Freedom Index created by Reporters Without Borders and, as the organization reported, in recent years it has always appeared in one of the last three places. See here for the coverage on North Korea by The New York Times.

The government allows foreign visitors occasional visits and journalists are restricted in their movements, the Guardian reported, quoting in the article AP's president and CEO, Tom Curley, who said in a statement that - despite the political situation in the country - the Pyongyang bureau would operate under the same standards and practices as AP bureaux worldwide.

Sources: AP, Guardian, RSF, APTN, NYT