Yonhap, S. Korea image in the mirror of media

Yonhap (meaning "consolidated" in Korean) was established on December 19, 1980, through the merger of Hapdong News Agency and Orient Press on the model of Japan's Kyodo News Agency.

It maintains various agreements with 65 non-Korean news agencies, and also has a services-exchange agreement with North Korea's KCNA agency, signed in 2002. It is the only Korean wire service that works with foreign news agencies, and provides news in English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and Arabic.

Yonhap was the host news agency of the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics, and was elected twice to the board of OANA.

Yonhap is South Korea's largest news agency with 41 correspondents abroad and 110 reporters across the nation. Its largest shareholder is the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS), South Korea's largest public broadcaster.

Xinhua and Yonhap news agencies’ presidents,

World Media Summit, Beijing, October 2009.

The Yonhap News Agency is one of OANA member agencies invited by the Mehr News Agency to attend the 31st Executive Board Meeting (EBM) and the 25th Editorial-Technical Experts Group (ETEG) Meeting in Tehran from November 13 to 17, 2009.

The Mehr News Agency is the host of the five-day event which is to be attended by more than 40 representatives of 18 governmental and non-governmental news agencies from the Asia-Pacific states, including Russia, Japan, China, S. Korea, Indonesia, India, and Malaysia.

On the theme of “A quest for global media balancing”, the meeting will be officially inaugurated on Sunday morning at Tehran Enqelab Hotel, managing director of the Mehr News Agency, also president of Tehran’s EBM and ETEG meetings said here on Tuesday.

According to Parviz Esmaeili, the meeting is aimed at closing gaps between the world media.