PYONGYANG, October 9. /TASS/. North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Im Chon Il believes that Russia’s TASS news agency plays an important role in deepening the Russian-Korean friendship. He was speaking at a meeting with a delegation of Russian media executives held in Pyongyang on Wednesday. He added that only TASS had been able to interview former DPRK leader Kim Jong Il twice.

"TASS is the world’s only foreign news agency, to which our Great Comrade Kim Jong Il granted a written interview twice during the entire period of his revolutionary activities, in July 2001 and in October 2011," Im Chon Il noted.

Im Chon Il added that TASS continued to cover events in North Korea impartially, thus playing "an important role in continuing the traditions of friendship from generation to generation, deepening the feeling of friendship between the two countries, as well as in strengthening mutual understanding and the spirit of cooperation between the two peoples."

The delegation of the top officials of Russian media outlets arrived in Pyongyang on Monday to take part in the talks on cooperation with North Korean counterparts. It is comprised of head of the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications Mikhail Seslavinsky, TASS Director General Sergei Mikhailov, Channel One Director General Konstantin Ernst, TASS First Deputy Director General Mikhail Gusman and TASS First Deputy Editor-in-Chief Marat Abulkhatin.

Negotiations between the executives of the TASS news agency and the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) were held in Pyongyang on Tuesday, during which Sergei Mikhailov and General Director of the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) Kim Chan Gwang signed a new agreement on cooperation between the leading Russian and North Korean news agencies.