Yonhap News celebrates 3rd anniversary of Arabic-language service

SEOUL, June 18 (Yonhap) -- Yonhap News Agency marked the third anniversary of the launch of its Arabic-language news service Thursday in a commemorative event attended by the region's ambassadors and company executives.

Yonhap started the service June 21, 2006, and has since filed some 13,000 news
stories, 2,000 photographs and 400 video clips.
The anniversary celebration was attended by ambassadors and embassy
representatives from 13 Arab countries.
"Yonhap News has been the window to informing the 300-million-strong
Arabic-speaking community around the world about the development of Korea for the
last three years," Egyptian Ambassador to Seoul Rada El Taify said in his remarks
at the start of the event.
"The Arabic-speaking nations will provide full support and cooperation for the
development and success of Yonhap's Arabic-language news service."
Park Jung-chan, president and CEO of Yonhap News, said he hopes for the service
to assume a bigger role in the future.
"The cooperation between South Korean and Arab societies has grown beyond the
past boundaries of economy and resources to diverse areas, including culture and
sports," Park said.
"Yonhap's Arabic-language news service will relay Korea-related information even
faster and more precisely to contribute to connecting the two sides."
Yonhap, in addition to its Arabic-language service, currently dispatches news in
four other languages -- English, Chinese, Japanese and Spanish.
The company plans to launch French-language news service within this year.