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Presidential office to hold meeting over possible N.K. provocations

April 16, 2013 - 17:10 By 박한나
South Korea's presidential office plans to hold a meeting with security-related ministries and agencies next month, officials said Tuesday, as the country prepares for possible provocations by North Korea.

National security chief Kim Jang-soo will preside over the meeting, which will be attended by vice ministers and their counterparts from the Prime Minister's Office, the defense ministry, the security and public administration ministry and the National Police Agency, among others, the officials said.

The meeting is expected to focus on coordinating a response to possible North Korean provocations amid the communist country's repeated threats of war and other hostile rhetoric.

In recent years, some of the North's biggest provocations against the South have included the deadly torpedoing of a South Korean warship and the shelling of a western border island in 2010, which killed a total of 50 South Koreans.

Next month's meeting is also expected to touch on ways for the government to launch a coordinated response to forest fires in the springtime as well as industrial accidents.

The so-called "National Crisis Assessment Meeting" was launched under the previous Lee Myung-bak administration and has since been held twice a year, with additional meetings during national crises. (Yonhap News)