Associated Press perestroika watch

The AP’s Pyongyang Bureau Chief, Eric Talmadge, has managed to coax the AP’s business partners at KCNA into letting him and photographer David Guttenfelder travel from Pyongyang to Mt. Paektu in the far north, by car. Having been duly warned not to got lost—or “you will be shot”—Talmadge and his minder stocked up on fuel coupons, Evian, and Skippy, and headed off toward Wonsan.

Even on the loneliest of lonely highways, we would never be without a “minder,” whose job was to monitor and supervise our activities. We were not to take photographs of any checkpoints or military installations, or talk to people we happened to see along the way. For the most part, we were not to detour from our pre-approved route, which, to no one’s surprise, didn’t include nuclear facilities or prison camps.

Though we would not get to know the people along the way, the country itself had a great deal to say. And no place is more symbolic of the North Korean psyche than Mount Paektu. [AP, Eric Talmadge]

See? Was that really so hard?

Talmadge and his minder did get lost in North Korea’s utter nocturnal blackness—“going the wrong way down a one-lane, one-way road”—but weren’t shot after all. The complete absence of traffic meant there was little danger of a collision, at least with another car.

Read the rest here, and have a look at Guttenfelder’s photographs here. The reporting isn’t as good as Rimjingang’s or The Daily NK‘s, and the photographs aren’t as good or as numerous as Kernbeisser’s, but it’s a lot better than AP’s usual fare–interesting, readable, and (as far as I can tell) honest.

I’ve said before that AP Pyongyang has produced (a) no newsworthy reporting that is exclusive, and (b) no exclusive reporting that is newsworthy. That is unlikely to change anytime soon, and Talmadge’s travelogue falls into category (b). Still, if AP Pyongyang continues to be honest about the restrictions on its reporting and avoids some of Jean Lee’s lapses into propaganda—and it’s far from certain that it will—its presence will do marginally more good than harm.