President urges action on reform

President Park Geun-hye stressed at a Tuesday Cabinet meeting the urgency of carrying out a range of reforms.

“All Cabinet members under the leadership of the prime minister should focus on implementing reforms with a pledge to lay out the next three decades of growth and also fight corruption,” she said.

The President said public support was crucial to the success of the reforms. She said the public needed to know why reform was so important and how it would affect their lives so they could join the process.

Park has pledged to reform the labor, finance and education markets during her five-year tenure, but a series of domestic crises, including the recent Middle East Respiratory Syndrome outbreak, has hampered progress.

The President also warned against “individual” actions by Cabinet members. Despite Park’s previous warnings, Cabinet members such as Finance Minister Choi Kyung-hwan and Education Minister Hwang Woo-yea are rumored to be quitting their posts to run in the 2016 general elections.