Press center to open for inter-Korean summit

The South Korean government will open a press center next week to accommodate the flood of journalists coming to cover the inter-Korean summit on April 27, a preparation committee announced Monday.

The press center will be located inside the Kintex exhibition hall just north of Seoul, officials said. It will open a day before South and North Korean leaders are scheduled to hold what will be the third inter-Korean summit in history at the truce village of Panmunjom. An estimated 2,000 foreign and Korean journalists and staff members are expected to cover the event.

Encompassing an area of around 1,000 square meters (10,800 square feet), the press center will have around 1,000 seats as well as special-purpose rooms for press briefings and interviews.

The press center is about seven times larger than similar centers that operated during the 2000 and 2007 summits.

Major events unfolding at Panmunjom will be announced and broadcast live there. The center will likely provide foreign reporters with simultaneous interpretation services. A separate press center will be established at Panmunjom to allow pool reporters to cover the inter-Korean summit.

A website providing up-to-date information about the summit, www.koreasummit.kr, will go live at noon today. The information will be available in nine languages, including Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese and Russian.

The inter-Korean summit is drawing attention for its potential in breaking through the nuclear stalemate with Pyongyang. Up until late last year, the North carried out missile and nuclear tests one after another and sparked concerns about possible military action on the peninsula.

The two Koreas are expected to discuss ways to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, establish lasting peace and improve inter-Korean relations, officials said.

The talks will be followed by an unprecedented U.S.-North Korea summit likely to be held either in May or June.

Yonhap