The Seoul mayor and the leader of the ruling Saenuri Party clashed Thursday over the conservative bloc's widening push to overhaul the country's public servant pension system.
  

The sparring between liberal-minded Mayor Park Won-soon and Saenuri Party Chairman Kim Moo-sung erupted as Kim mounted criticism over Park's reservations over the pension reform drive in a recent media interview.
  

On the back of strong ruling party support, the government is pushing to restructure the loss-making pension plan for civil servants. Revisions to cut pension payments have been raised as ways to secure the sustainability of the civil servant pension fund.
  

"Seoul Mayor Park has recently made a remark that goes against the pension reform, saying that pensions are the only hope for low-paying civil servants," Kim said in the meeting of senior party members earlier in the morning.
  

"It was very inconsiderate of him to make the improper remark as someone well-aware of the financial difficulties of the country," Kim said, adding that such a dissenting remark lets down those preparing for public employment.
  

Claiming that Park indicated the need to push back the April deadline set for the outlining of the reform, the party leader also noted that the reform drive will lose momentum if that happens.
  

"Mayor Park should know the scale of the public pension's shortfall before making such remarks," he also said, bitterly criticizing the mayor.
  

Park immediately hit back, releasing the recording of the interview and clarifying that he didn't oppose the pension reform plan.
  

"As shown in the recording, it was nothing more or less than the opinion that anything wrong in the civil workers' pension plan should be addressed, although prudence is needed (in doing so)," Kim In-chul, the city government's spokesman, said.
  

The full sentence of what Park said in the interview carried out three days earlier was "(The reform) should be well discussed as (pensions) are the only hope for civil workers."
  

Touching on the April deadline, the mayor noted, "I understand that the reform should be implemented when the momentum is in the air, but the process for social consensus is important as well."
  

The recent bickering between the two president hopefuls reflects their subtle cleavage over the reform drive.
  

Park and Kim have been widely cited as the most promising presidential candidates from the liberal and conservative blocs for the next presidential election set for late 2017. (Yonhap)