President Park Geun-hye said Friday she is making the utmost effort to reform South Korea with a sense of urgency that there is no future without tackling what she calls a difficult task.
The Park Geun-hye administration has been struggling to bring changes to the country’s rigid labor and financial markets, civil service pensions and education, among other things.
Still, she admitted the challenges of reforming a wide range of sectors, borrowing a phrase that reform is harder than carrying out a revolution.
She made the comments in a meeting with nearly 500 young South Koreans at the presidential compound.
Earlier this week, Park met with the heads of the rival political parties and reached a consensus on reforming civil service pensions, though it remains unclear whether the rival parties can work out their differences and produce a bipartisan deal on the controversial issue.
The case for pension reform for public servants has gained urgency as the increasing average life expectancy for Koreans could further deepen the pension deficit.
South Korea has faced the looming crisis as previous governments delayed addressing the issue of pensions for civil servants, despite being aware for decades that the current pension plan is not sustainable.
Also Friday, Park renewed her call to make efforts to open an era of unification with North Korea, calling it “a historic task that cannot be delayed anymore.”
Inter-Korean relations are currently at one of their lowest points in many years.
The North has recently threatened to retaliate against South Korea over its annual joint military drills with the United States. The North claims the joint military drills are a rehearsal for a nuclear war against it. (Yonhap)
