South Korea’s top official handling inter-Korean affairs called for stepped-up efforts to prepare for reunification with North Korea this week, days after Kim Jong Un declared unification an “impossible” dream.

Warning that the situation on the Korean Peninsula will be more difficult in the coming year, unification minister Kim Yung-ho said in a New Year’s address on Tuesday that Seoul will work to “create a path that does not exist and to rediscover the path that seems to have disappeared.”

South Korea will continue to pursue the goal of peaceful unification based on liberal democracy, he said, as espoused by