Maria Byrne and two of her BBC colleagues arrived in Beijing on Monday.
Maria Byrne, a BBC producer originally from Tullow in Carlow, and two of her BBC colleagues have been expelled from North Korea after the North Korean leadership were said to be displeased with elements of their reporting from the country.
Byrne, BBC correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes and cameraman Matthew Goddard were stopped by officials as they were due to leave Pyongyang on Friday.
According to the BBC, Wingfield-Hayes was questioned by North Korean officials for eight hours and made to sign a statement.
Byrne, Wingfield-Hayes and Goddard remained in Pyongyang until Monday when they flew to Beijing; Byrne tweeted that she was happy to have arrived back in Beijing on Monday afternoon.
We are very happy to be back in Beijing
— Maria Byrne (@byrnemaria) May 9, 2016
All three had been in North Korea as part of a BBC team, where they were accompanying a delegation of Nobel Prize laureates conducting a research trip ahead of the Workers’ Party Congress.
It is believed that the North Korean leadership was displeased with their reports highlighting aspects of life in Pyongyang, with a North Korean government spokesperson telling a news conference that they had been “speaking very ill of the system”.
A BBC spokesman said: “We are very disappointed that our reporter Rupert Wingfield-Hayes and his team have been deported from North Korea after the government took offence at material he had filed.
“Four BBC staff, who were invited to cover the Workers Party Congress, remain in North Korea and we expect them to be allowed to continue their reporting.”
Maria’s father Pat Byrne told KCLR News on Monday that Maria had emailed her parents to tell them she was being detained after refusing to leave the country.
Pat told KCLR News that the authorities in North Korea originally wanted to detain just Rupert, but Maria and the crew refused to leave without him.
He said the family were completely shell-shocked but they had received a text from their daughter to say that she had landed in Beijing.
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