Park calls for crisis management

President Park Geun-hye speaks at a meeting with her senior secretaries at Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul, Monday.
/ AP-Yonhap

By Kang Seung-woo

President Park Geun-hye called for comprehensive measures, Monday, to cushion negative effects from Britain's vote to leave the European Union.

In her first public statement after the Brexit poll, Park also called on the nation to throw its full support behind the government's restructuring and economic recovery plans.

"Amid growing uncertainty in global financial markets, the government needs to maintain a watertight crisis management system against possible fallout," Park said during a meeting with her senior secretaries at Cheong Wa Dae.

She also asked the administration to take all necessary measures to help stabilize the fluctuating local stock and foreign currency markets.

"To minimize the aftermath of a Brexit-spurred financial crisis, we need to run an around-the-clock monitoring system and strengthen cooperation with the international community to ensure that the global market stabilizes quickly," she said.

Along with the call for an aggressive response to Brexit, Park stressed that the nation's financial status is strong enough to cushion the shock on the market from the unexpected move.

"Currently, the country's fiscal soundness is strong enough to weather shocks from the outside. We should make active efforts to publicize our country's capabilities to counter the latest economic challenge."

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Touching on North Korea issues, President Park said the nation should make efforts to prevent North Korean sympathizers from sowing division and defending the repressive state here.

"We should ward off those who are sowing division here and siding with North Korea," she said.

Despite failing to elaborate on these backers, Park seemed to point to the Lawyers for a Democratic Society.

The local liberal lawyers' group recently challenged the legality of Seoul's protection of a group of North Korean defectors, who the reclusive state claims have been kidnapped by the South.

As for North Korea's growing nuclear and missile threats, Park said that the nation must maintain a united stance to effectively deal with the issue.

On Wednesday, Pyongyang launched two Musudan intermediate range missiles off its east coast — one of them being seen as a partial success.

"When a country faces a national crisis, the most frightening issue is internal division and apathy," she said. "When South Vietnam fell down in the past, the biggest cause was internal division."

She also said that while the international community is forming a strong stance on North Korean provocations, South Korea needs to forge national cohesion and support against the North's threats.

"The North's repeated nuclear and missile provocations can be disregarded as simple threats, but we should keep in mind that they could pose real threats that can endanger the lives of our citizens," she said.

In March, the United Nations (U.N.) imposed the toughest sanctions yet on the North for its fourth nuclear test, Jan. 6, and long-range rocket launch, Feb. 7, both of which violated U.N. resolutions.

In addition, the U.N. adopted a press statement, Friday, strongly condemning North Korea's latest missile tests.

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