Yonhap News Agency, South Korea's key news service, on Wednesday elected Park No-hwang, a director of Yonhap Infomax, as its new president and chief executive officer in a shareholders and board meeting.

Park's election came after the board of the News Agency Promotion Foundation, Yonhap's largest shareholder, decided to recommend him as Yonhap's new president in a meeting on March 10.

The 57-year-old Park will begin his three-year tenure in an inaugural ceremony on Wednesday afternoon, replacing Song Hyun-seung.

Park, a graduate of the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, joined Yonhap in 1983 and had served in several of the company's key posts, including chief of the company's Washington branch, editor-in-chief and as a managing director in charge of international and business affairs before moving to Yonhap Infomax, the financial news and market intelligence arm of Yonhap News, in 2012.

Park worked as president of the financial news service the same year before becoming the company's special missions director in 2013.

Three new executives were also appointed.

Lee Hong-ki, an adviser of Yonhap News' content review office, was appointed as an executive director and concurrently as a managing director in charge of management support; Shim Soo-hwa, a planning consultant of Yonhap's Busan regional office, was appointed as managing director for marketing; and Cho Bock-rae, chief of Yonhap News TV's news bureau, was appointed as managing director for content convergence.

Yonhap News Agency is South Korea's key newswire service that produces content for newspapers, broadcasters, Internet portals, the government and private enterprises, distributing some 3,000 news articles per day.

Yonhap also has some 60 reporters in 37 major cities in 28 countries as well as the most extensive nationwide network in South Korea, and provides daily news in Korean, English, Chinese, Japanese, French, Arabic and Spanish. (Yonhap)