(OANA summit) Asia-Pacific news agencies to open summit in Seoul next week

By Yoo Cheong-mo
SEOUL, April 15 (Yonhap) -- Chief executives of leading Asia-Pacific news
agencies are to gather in South Korea next week to open the nation's largest news
media summit in the face of a rapidly changing global media environment.
The unprecedented media summit, scheduled for April 21-24 in Seoul, will draw
representatives from almost all member companies of the Organization of
Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA) for discussions on how to broaden their
cooperative relations in digital media content and services.
The upcoming Seoul meeting will be the largest official event in the history of
OANA, which was formed in 1961 on the initiative of UNESCO to promote regional
news exchanges and now claims 41 member companies in 33 countries.
OANA and Yonhap News Agency, South Korea's key news agency, plan to co-host the
OANA Summit Congress, which has also been prepared as part of Yonhap's 30th
founding anniversary celebrations.
"The OANA Summit Congress will be particularly meaningful, as South Korea will
host the G-20 summit in Seoul this November," Yonhap News Agency President and
CEO Park Jung-chan said Thursday, noting that 11 of the participating countries
in the OANA summit are G-20 members.
"Yonhap will take the OANA meeting as an opportunity to promote the G-20 summit
among the regional news agencies. In addition, Asia-Pacific news industry leaders
will explore ways to jointly cope with the rapidly changing media landscape,"
Park said.
Heads of newswire associations from Europe, Africa and the Middle East will also
attend the Seoul summit as observers, organizers at Yonhap said. A total of 46
news agencies in 37 countries worldwide have so far confirmed their
participation.
All except three OANA member companies will attend the Seoul conference.
Leading figures from South Korea's government, politics and media are also
scheduled to join the summit, which will be held at Seoul's Lotte Hotel under the
theme, "Challenges and opportunities for news agencies."
At the closing of the OANA summit, participants will adopt a joint declaration of
their intention to widen cooperative relations and exchanges among member
companies, in the field of new media content in particular, Park said.
Participants will have opportunities to tour South Korea's major industrial and
tourist sites following the official program. On the sidelines of the OANA
summit, Yonhap and other OANA members will display a collection of photos taken
by Asia-Pacific photo journalists over the past decade in the lobby of the Lotte
Hotel.
Participants in the Seoul summit will include Xinhua News Agency from China,
Japan's Kyodo News, the Information Telegraph Agency of Russia (Itar-Tass), the
Australian Associated Press and Indonesia's Antara News.
Chair companies from the Federation of Arab News Agencies, the European Alliance
of Press Agencies, the Association of Balkan News Agencies and the Alliance of
Mediterranean News Agencies will attend the Seoul meeting as observers.
ycm@yna.co.kr
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