President Park Geun-hye appears likely to hold a New Year press conference next week to unveil her policy agenda for 2015, a presidential official said Tuesday.
Park’s chief spokesman Yoon Doo-hyun indicated that she could hold a conference early next week, though he said no decision has been made yet.
Last year, she held a nationally televised press conference on Jan. 6.
The broad themes that Park could stress in a news conference could include her repeated calls for reform in such areas as the labor market and civil service pensions.
The possibility of a news conference comes amid signs of a thaw in relations between the two rival Koreas, which are still technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an uneasy ceasefire, not a peace treaty.
Park has recently pledged to make “substantial” preparations for potential unification with North Korea, soon after the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, offered conditional summit talks with her.
In his New Year address last Thursday, the North’s leader said he is willing to hold summit talks with Park if the right conditions are created.
Park’s two liberal predecessors held summit talks with the then North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, the late father of the current leader Kim, in Pyongyang in 2000 and 2007, respectively. Kim Jong-il died of heart failure in 2011. (Yonhap)
