Editing Yonhap News Agency (section)

==History==
Yonhap was established on 19 December 1980, through the merger of Hapdong News Agency and Orient Press.<ref name ="Hoare 2005"/> The Hapdong News Agency itself emerged in late 1945 out of the short-lived Kukje News, which had operated for two months out of the office of the [[Dōmei Tsushin|Domei]], the former Japanese news agency that had functioned in Korea during the Japanese [[Korea under Japanese rule|Japanese colonial era]].<ref name ="Hoare 2005"/>

In 1999, Yonhap took over the Naewoe News Agency. Naewoe was a South Korea government-affiliated organization, created in the mid 1970s, tasked with publishing information and analysis on North Korea from a South Korean perspective through books and journals.<ref name ="Hoare 2012"/><ref name ="Hoare 2005"/> Naewoe was known to have close links with [[National Intelligence Service (South Korea)|South Korea's intelligence agency]],<ref name ="Hoare 2012"/> and according to the British academic and historian [[James Hoare]], Naowoe's publications became "less partisan after the late 1980s and are often useful source of information on North Korea".<ref name ="Hoare 2015"/> In 1999, Naewoe merged with Yonhap News Agency,<ref name ="Hoare 2005"/> with materials on North Korea continued to be "distributed for free as part of the government's propaganda effort".<ref name ="Hoare 2015"/> According to the U.S. [[Library of Congress]], "Originally a propaganda vehicle that followed the government line on unification policy issued, Naowae Press became increasingly objective and moderate in tone in the mid-1980s in interpreting political, social, and economic developments in North Korea".<ref name ="LOC 1992"/> Naowae's principal publication was the monthly magazine ''[[Vantage Point: Developments in North Korea]]'', which continued to be published by Yonhap until its discontinuation in 2016.<ref name ="Vantage Point 2016"/>