Washington, D.C., October 1, 2007 – The Voice of America’s (VOA) Korean Service today launches three new programs and transforms its Seoul bureau into a multimedia News Center. The initiatives expand VOA’s reach to North Koreans.
“North Korea is one of the most closed societies in the world,” said VOA Director Danforth Austin. “It is imperative that we make every effort to provide North Koreans with accurate news and information about U.S. and world events that they don’t receive in their domestic media.”
VOA’s three new Korean-language programs—America Today, News Panorama, and VOA News Parade—will increase its radio broadcasts to five hours daily from three and half.
- America Today ( 11:00 p.m. Korean time , 1400 UTC) is a daily 30-minute evening program highlighting all walks of American society, people, and culture.
- VOA News Parade ( 4:00 a.m. Korean time, 2000 UTC) is a one-hour news program focusing on Washington’s responses to the day’s major news through discussions with experts in international affairs and foreign policy.
- News Panorama ( 9:00 p.m. Korean time, 1200 UTC) covers the main news around the Korean peninsula with live reports from Seoul, Beijing, Tokyo, and other parts of the world.
With an expanded staff and equipped for independent production, VOA’s Seoul News Center will provide a steady stream of reports for use throughout VOA with enhanced coverage of events in North and South Korea, as well as other parts of Asia.
More information about VOA’s Korean Service is at http://www.voanews.com/korean/
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. VOA broadcasts more than 1,000 hours of news, information, educational, and cultural programming every week to an estimated worldwide audience of more than 115 million people. Programs are produced in 45 languages.
For more information, call the Office of Public Affairs at (202) 203-4959, or e-mail publicaffairs@voa.gov.