Greetings from Seong Ghi-hong, CEO of Yonhap News Agency,
As the country's leading news agency providing domestic and international news on a real-time basis, Yonhap News Agency strives to guarantee the people's right to know through fair and balanced reporting based on facts.
Designated as South Korea's key wire service provider under the Act on the Promotion of News Communications, Yonhap News Agency has been running its close-knit news coverage networks at home and abroad around the clock throughout the year, with an aim to fulfill its "public duties," such as safeguarding information sovereignty and addressing the information divide.
Yonhap News Agency covers international and Korean Peninsula issues from our perspectives and distributes news content secured under contracts with 90 news agencies from 78 countries across the globe to about 1,000 clients, including local newspapers and broadcasters.
Moreover, it publishes major domestic news articles in six foreign languages -- English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Spanish and French -- in order to provide accurate information on the Republic of Korea to outside audiences and help prevent any misrepresentation by foreign media outlets.
Yonhap News Agency also provides news on North Korea most accurately and quickly through official distribution contracts with the North's official Korean Central News Agency and Korean Central Television, thus contributing to establishing the foundation for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and peaceful coexistence with in-depth and accurate reporting on North Korea.
In addition, Yonhap News Agency is striving to serve as a locomotive to usher in an era of unification on the Korean Peninsula by hosting an annual international academic conference, titled the Korean Peninsula Peace Symposium, and preparing for possible inter-Korean press exchanges, such as establishing a bureau in Pyongyang.
By running the biggest regional news coverage network among South Korean media companies, Yonhap News Agency pursues balanced regional development, while at the same time sparing no efforts to ensure the protection of people's lives and properties by establishing a system for rapid and accurate reporting on natural and manmade disasters.
Through fair reporting, Yonhap News Agency will win public trust and become a news agency that lives up to people's expectations by faithfully carrying out its public role as the country's key news wire service.
Thank you very much.
Seong Ghi-hongCEO
Yonhap News Agency