Thursday, February 28, 2008

Yahoo! Korea to offer VOA News in Real Time


PRESS RELEASE - Washington, D.C., February 27, 2008 - Yahoo! Korea announced today that it will offer Voice of America news covering the Korean Peninsula, international and U.S. news. The online news service will cover breaking political, diplomatic, and international news from hard-to-access areas of North Korea and the Korean Peninsula.

Under this partnership agreement, Yahoo! Korea will offer VOA news in the Korean language in real time, giving Korean users free access to news flashes on important topics such as the six-party negotiations regarding North Korea and major policy decisions of the U.S. Administration and Congress. The VOA news service will be available on Yahoo! Korea mid-March.

"This partnership allows Yahoo! Korea as a leading global portal to steadily strengthen its news content, enhancing its role as the Internet's leading starting point by delivering domestic and international news promptly and accurately," said Kim Jung-Hoon, director of Yahoo! Korea Media.

In addition, Yahoo! Korea plans to offer VOA's Special English, which uses a vocabulary of 1,500 common words presented at a slow rate of speech, and is regarded worldwide as an excellent resource for those learning American English.

In announcing the agreement, John Lennon, VOA Associate Director for Language programming, observed, "This represents another valuable avenue for our Korean audience to get reliable news and information on significant events – developments we know they are eager to get in real time."

VOA offers accurate, objective, and balanced news to a worldwide audience of more than 115 million people. The Voice of America, which first went on the air in 1942, is a multimedia international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government through the Broadcasting Board of Governors.
(Source: VOA News)