White House press corps removed from media center at Kim hotel

The White House press corps has been had their workspace relocated from the media center at the hotel where North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is staying in Vietnam.

The move happened as the North Korean leader arrived, sending many American reporters scrambling for a new setup.

“The American Media Center will be relocated from Melia hotel to International Media Center,” the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry tweeted Tuesday.

FYI:
the American Media Center will be relocated from Melia hotel to International Media Center at 91 Tran Hung Dao Hanoi#DPRKUSA #HanoiSummit

— MoFAVietNam Spokesperson (@PressDept_MoFA) February 26, 2019

The American journalists will now have to transmit reports on the meeting between Kim and Trump from other locations, including sharing an area set up for the international press.

{mosads}Witnesses have shared that Kim’s security team forced people out of the area as Kim arrived at the hotel he would be staying in for the second North Korea-U.S. summit.

“Security forces prohibited us from taking pictures from inside the hotel though we could see (state?) camera rolling on him as his entourage came thru,” Margaret Talev, senior White House correspondent for Bloomberg, tweeted. “Guards were literally right up on us saying no cameras.”

Security forces prohibited us from taking pictures from inside the hotel though we could see (state?) camera rolling on him as his entourage came thru. Guards were literally right up on us saying no cameras.

— Margaret Talev (@margarettalev) February 26, 2019

NBC News’s Peter Alexander said that guards did not allow him to take the elevator in the hotel and told him to delete any photos he had taken of Kim’s arrival. 

My reporter’s notebook from *inside* Kim Jong-un’s Hanoi hotel, where I’m staying, before I was ordered to clear out of the lobby… pic.twitter.com/Rw4aTLXJIZ

— Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) February 26, 2019

President Trump touched down in Vietnam on Tuesday morning. The two leaders will have their second face-to-face meeting on Wednesday after meeting in Singapore last June.

The meeting comes as the U.S. continues to push for North Korea to denuclearize.

The Hill has reached out to the White House Correspondents’ Association for comment.