N. Korean threats impede Asian growth: Park

North Korea's nuclear threats and military provocations impede Asia's huge growth potential, President Park Geun-hye said Tuesday, vowing a firm response against any provocations from the North.
  

"The Asian region has an enormous growth potential, but as long as North Korea keeps blocking the blood vessel of growth with its nuclear threats and provocations, it would be hard to expect genuine stability and progress in Asia," Park said in a speech to a forum on Asian leadership.
  

In recent weeks, North Korea has escalated tensions on the Korean Peninsula through its test-firing of a submarine-launched ballistic missile and the reign of terror, as seen in the successive purging of North Korean officials, the president said.
  

"South Korea will sternly react to any kinds of provocations by North Korea with a consistent principle while continuing to make efforts to induce North Korea to walk on the normal path of progress through exchange and cooperation with the international community," she noted.
  

Touching on diplomatic tensions in Northeast Asia, Park said closer inter-Korean relations will help bring peace to the area as well as the entire globe.
  

"If South and North Korea jointly set up a world peace park at the demilitarized zone and open a path of cooperation between two Koreas, it will greatly contribute to peace in the Northeast Asian region as well as world peace," she said.
  

For its part, Seoul will keep pursuing private-level exchange with Pyongyang and providing humanitarian aid to the country to reunite the two divided countries, Park added.
  

Park's remarks follow North Korea's recent series of military provocations as well as signs of internal instability.
  

Earlier this month, the North claimed to have successfully test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine before launching two days of live-fire drills just north of the inter-Korean maritime border in the Yellow Sea.
  

North Korea is also believed to have executed defense minister Hyon Yong-chol in recent weeks for being defiant to leader Kim Jong-un. (Yonhap)

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