During a meeting with his top aides on Monday, President Moon Jae-in stressed the reunion of separated families must become a regular event.
He also called for greater efforts to create more jobs in South Korea as the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high and continues to tick up.
Hwang Hojun reports.
According to the South Korean President, Seoul and Pyongyang have to act boldly to expand and speed up the reunions of separated families,... calling it a top priority among the humanitarian projects the two Koreas must undertake together.
"South and North must take measures to expand reunions. Not only regular events like this, but reunions by video conferencing, a permanent center for reunions, letter exchanges and visits to hometowns."
President Moon said he himself is part of a separated family, and he noted that about 56-thousand South Koreans are still waiting to be reunited with their families in the North.
In his regular meeting Monday with his top aides, President Moon called for speedy efforts in view of the old age of many of the people on both sides. Since 2013, an average of 36-hundred members of the separated families have died each year.
As for the worsening job situation in South Korea, President Moon admitted the latest figures were disappointing.
"The government has been running its finance and policies to create better quality jobs, which has been the center of our administration. But we have to admit, according to the results, they were insufficient."
That comment comes a day after Statistics Korea released a report saying the unemployment rate rose to 3.7 percent in July, up 3 tenths of a percentage point from the same month last year. Only 5,000 jobs were added over the same period,... marking the lowest increase since January of 2010.
The report card prompted criticism of the Moon administration's push to raise the minimum wage and to create new jobs in the public sector as part of its policy of income-led growth.
However, President Moon blamed structural factors such as the nation's demographic challenges, industrial restructuring, and automation, saying the government will spend more to support job creation.
He also asked his top aides to come up with measures to speed up innovation in regulation and to make the economy more fair in order to increase investment and employment in the private sector.
Hwang Hojun, Arirang News.
