Paraguayan state television has invited Arirang’s president and CEO Sohn Gi-ae to visit the South American country and sign an MOU with Paraguay TV, according to the Paraguayan Ambassador to South Korea Ceferino Valdez.

Sohn is being invited to participate as a special guest of a seminar on Latin American and Caribbean public television.

Valdez made the comments on the eve of the Korea-Latin American Broadband Forum in Seoul on Oct. 15-16, joined by ministerial level government officials representing communications ministries from more than a dozen countries.

South Korea assists Latin American countries with developing Internet capacity and speed. The net in South Korea is on average the fastest in the world at 14.2 Mbps, according to Akamai Technologies’ “State of the Internet” report covering the first quarter of the year. Paraguay’s is less than 2 Mbps and average Internet speed in South America is a slow 2 Mbps.

Paraguay’s director general of strategic communications, Cesar Palacios, said he came to Seoul specifically to talk about broadband as it applies to TV, and to share Paraguay’s experience with broadcasting programming in Guarani.

While about 2 percent of the country is Guarani, nearly half of the rural population only speaks the indigenous language, which it is also an official national language in Paraguay. Guarani is an indigenous language also spoken in the neighboring countries of Brazil, Bolivia and Argentina.

By Philip Iglauer (ephilip2011@heraldcorp.com)