South Korea's incoming president,?Park Geun-hye, says she will reach out to the North and offer humanitarian aid. Some analysts doubt her sincerity and expect her to take a more moderate approach.?
South Korea's president-elected Park Geun-hye speaks during a press conference at the headquarters of Saenuri Party in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday.
AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon
EnlargePark Geun-hye promises to reach out to North?Korea?with more humanitarian aid and deeper engagement after she moves into South?Korea's?presidential Blue House on Feb. 25. Pyongyang, however, may be in no mood to talk anytime soon.
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Park's declarations ahead of Wednesday's election that she will soften five years of hard-line policy rang true with voters, even as they rejected her opponent's calls for a more aggressive pursuit of reconciliation with the North.
A skeptical North?Korea?may quickly test the sincerity of Park's offer to engage ? possibly even before she takes office. She is both a leading member of the conservative ruling party and the daughter of the late anti-communist dictator Park Chung-hee, and Pyongyang has repeatedly called her dialogue offers "tricks." North Korean media didn't mention Park's name in a short dispatch noting her party's victory.
Outgoing President Lee Myung-bak's tough approach on North?Korea?? including his demand that engagement be accompanied by nuclear disarmament progress ? has been deemed a failure by many South Koreans. During his five years in office, North?Korea?has conducted nuclear and rocket tests ? including a rocket launch last week ? and it was blamed for two incidents that left 50 South Koreans dead in 2010.
But reaching out to North?Korea's?authoritarian government also has failed to pay off. Before Lee, landmark summits under a decade of liberal governments resulted in lofty statements and photo ops in Pyongyang between then-leader Kim Jong Il and South Korean presidents, but the North continued to develop its nuclear weapons, which it sees as necessary defense and leverage against Washington and Seoul.
Analysts said Park's vague promises of aid and engagement are not likely to be enough to push Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions, which Washington and Seoul have demanded for true reconciliation to begin. To reverse the antipathy North?Korea?has so far shown her, Park may need to go further than either her deeply conservative supporters and political allies or a cautious Obama administration will want.
"North?Korea?is good at applying pressure during South Korean transitions" after presidential elections, said Yoo Ho-yeol, a professor at?Korea?University in South?Korea. "North?Korea?will do something to try to test, and tame, Park."
Even the last liberal president, Roh Moo-hyun, a champion of no-strings-attached aid to Pyongyang, faced a North Korean short-range missile launch on the eve of his 2003 inauguration.
North?Korea?put its first satellite into space with last week's rocket launch, which the U.N. and others called a cover for a test of banned ballistic missile technology.
Despite the launch, Park says humanitarian aid, including food, medicine and daily goods meant for infants, the sick and other vulnerable people, will flow. She says none of the aid will be anything that North?Korea'smilitary could use. She's open to conditional talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
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