A non-government organization dealing with Olympic broadcasting rights for North Korea said Thursday it will allow the North to air the international sports events across the country.
The decision came after Kim In-kyu, the president of South Korea's public broadcaster KBS and chief of the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU), returned from a three-day visit to the North over the broadcasting issue.
Kim said the four-men ABU delegation he led struck an agreement with the North's Radio and Television Broadcasting Committee under which the organization will provide the North with support to produce and broadcast TV programs on the events while the North pays for the rights.
How much the North will pay was not revealed.
According to the deal, the North Korean committee will dispatch a staff of six to London and air the games for a minimum of 200 hours, he said.
The deal came after three local broadcast firms locally sharing the broadcast rights over the Korean Peninsula -- KBS, MBC and SBS -- entrusted the ABU to decide whether the Olympics could be broadcast in the North.
The North has dispatched 56 athletes in 11 events to the international competition, including male and female soccer, marathon, table tennis, wrestling, judo and weightlifting.
In addition to the forthcoming Olympic games, the ABU will also allow North Korea to use broadcast rights for the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, according to the delegation.
Also included in the deal were broadcast cooperation plans between the ABU and the North as well as between the two Koreas, it said.
Under the deal, the non-profit organization will help the North smoothly transfer to digital broadcasting from its current analogue signal-based transmissions and the divided countries will exchange television documentaries.
In response to speculations that Kim may have carried a diplomatic message from the South Korean government on his visit North, he said, "The visit in my capacity as the ABU chief was only aimed at discussions of cooperative measures on sports broadcasting.
"I only met officials related with the broadcasting committee." (Yonhap)
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