Amid the growing public expectation and concern at home and abroad for a joint conference of political parties, organizations and individual personages of the north, the south and abroad, the north side preparatory committee is proactively stepping up the work for preparing the joint conference.

The preparatory committee discussed all the issues of making the conference a turning point in preserving peace and security on the Korean peninsula, repairing the north-south relations and paving a broad avenue to independent reunification as desired by all Koreans and took a series of measures to do so.

It is also pushing ahead with the work for organizing sub-committees to discuss and settle the practical issues arising in promoting national reconciliation and unity and intensifying the movement for national reunification together with the representatives of political parties, organizations and people of various circles in south Korea and abroad with the joint conference as a momentum.

It is making sincere arrangements for a variety of the work to make the joint conference significant and colorful.

Meanwhile, the South Side Committee for Implementing the June 15 Joint Declaration, South Headquarters of the Pan-national Alliance for Korea's Reunification, south Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, the Federation of Trade Unions of south Korea, south Korean Federation of Peasants Associations, Youth Solidarity and other organizations and people from all walks of life in south Korea held press conferences and issued statements in support of the proposal for holding the joint conference, saying that it is the one for wide-ranging political negotiations to defuse the daily increasing danger of a war on the Korean peninsula and pave the way to peace and reunification and that it is the fairest proposal for reunification.

The bodies expressed their will to make efforts to successfully hold the joint conference to the last, condemning the south Korean authorities' refusal to accept the proposal for no reason as an anti-reunification action going against the trend of the times because they claimed that it is a "strategy of the united front for achieving reunification through communization" and "tactics fostering division and conflict in the south".

The south Korean authorities would be well advised to properly understand the ardent desire and unanimous aspiration of all the fellow countrymen to bring about a fresh phase of national reunification and the improvement of the inter-Korean relations through the joint conference and join the whole nation in the efforts to hold the great national conference for reunification.