Chris Usher / CBS News via Getty Images

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough appears on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday in Washington, DC.

The Obama administration on Sunday signaled that it would be open to holding nuclear and security talks with North Korea as long as those discussions are “real" and "based on them living up to their obligations" — including denuclearization.

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation” a day after Pyongyang proposed high-level talks with Washington, said the North must dismantle its nuclear program before the U.S. agrees to face-to-face conversations.

“Those talks have to be real,” McDonough said. “We’ll judge them by their actions, not by the nice words that we heard yesterday.”

The National Security Council struck a similar chord Sunday, saying the Obama administration wants “credible negotiations” with North Korea.

North Korea must live up to “its obligations to the world” and observe United Nations resolutions, National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said.

Pyongyang’s top government body on Saturday offered to hold “senior-level” talks with Washington after months of acrimony between the two governments.

“In order to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula and to achieve regional peace and safety, we propose to hold high-level talks between (North Korea) and the United States,” said a spokesman for the North’s National Defense Commission in a statement released to the state-owned KCNA news agency Sunday.

The United States, along with Japan and South Korea, are expected to discuss the North's invitation in Washington this week, according to The Associated Press.

Hostility between the two nations has swelled in recent months, following the North’s launch of a long-range rocket in December and a nuclear test in February.

Acrimony began to lessen in May and June, as Pyongyang extended a hesitant olive branch to the U.S. and South Korea.

The South and Korea agreed to hold high-level talks in Seoul in early June, but the meetings were cancelled after conflict over logistics.

Pyongyang’s sudden interest in closer ties with the South and friendlier relations with the U.S. may stem from pressure from Beijing, as some security analysts have speculated.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama signaled their agreement on the weapons issue at a recent summit in California, saying that North Korea’s nuclear program poses a significant threat to the international community.

North Korea's top government body is proposing high-level nuclear and security talks with the United States days after a planned meeting with rival South Korea collapsed. 

The National Defense Commission said Sunday that the talks should ease tensions and achieve peace and security on the Korean Peninsula. 

North Korea has issued a series of angry statements since U.N. sanctions were imposed after a December rocket launch and a February nuclear test. There have been threats of nuclear war by the North, followed by South Korean vows of counterstrikes. 

Outside analysts say North Korea often expresses interest in talks after raising tension with provocative behavior in order to win outside concessions. 

Washington's top worry is North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Pyongyang is estimated to have a handful of crude nuclear devices.

Kyodo News via AP, file

Chinese security officers and officials at the South Korean Embassy in Beijing scuffle with a North Korea asylum seeker near the building's main gate in this 2002 photo.

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea's prison population has swelled in recent years with those caught fleeing the country under a crackdown on defections by young leader Kim Jong Un, according to defectors living in South Korea and researchers who study Pyongyang's notorious network of labor camps and detention centers.

Soon after he succeeded his father as North Korean leader, Kim is believed to have tightened security on the country's borders and pressured Pyongyang's neighbor and main ally, China, to repatriate anyone caught on its side of the frontier.

"They are tightening the noose," said Insung Kim, a researcher from the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights.

"Forced repatriation from China is a pathway to pain, suffering, and violence," according to "Hidden Gulags," an exhaustive 2012 study on the prison camps by veteran human rights researcher and author David Hawk. "Arbitrary detention, torture and forced labor are inflicted upon many repatriated North Koreans."

In 2003, Park Seong-hyeok, then 7, and his parents were arrested trying to reach Mongolia from China and sent back to North Korea. He ended up at a prison in the northern city of Chongjin, where he was packed in with other kids, some of them homeless children rounded up off the streets.

"I couldn't even tell whether I was alive," Park said. "We were provided five pieces of potato a day, each about the size of a fingernail."

After a few months, he managed to escape after his uncle bribed the guards. With the help of relatives, he made it to South Korea, but he assumes his parents, who he has not seen in 10 years, remain imprisoned in the North.

Lee Jin-Man / AP

Park Seong-hyeok, 18, says he spent years in a North Korea prison as a child.

In the 18 months since Kim took power, any hopes the 20-something ruler would usher in a new era of human rights reforms have been squelched.

North Korea considers those who leave the country to be guilty of treason and subject to up to five years of manual labor. In addition, the penal code states if the nature of the defection is "serious" — taken by most researchers to mean if the defector gets the help of South Korean or American Christian missionary groups as opposed to trying to reach China for work purposes — the defector risks an additional charge of anti-state activities that could mean life in prison or even death.

North Koreans considered hostile to the government can spend the rest of their lives, along with their families, in one of at least five sprawling labor camps or colonies that encompass fields, factories, mines and housing blocks.

Defectors may end up in those camps, but are typically held first in other detention facilities close to the border, just as brutal but more resembling traditional penitentiaries, according to human rights groups. Still, at least one labor camp, Yodok, now has a special section for those repatriated from China that houses thousands of inmates, according to Kang Cheol-hwan, a former inmate there.

Kang, who recounted his experiences at the camp in the book "The Aquariums of Pyongyang," said his information came from contacts in the North. He currently heads a foreign-funded campaigning and advocacy group aimed at spreading democracy in North Korea.

Slideshow: Glimpses into the hermit kingdom of North Korea

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As chief Asia photographer for the Associated Press, David Guttenfelder has had unprecedented access to communist North Korea. Here's a rare look at daily life in the secretive country.

Launch slideshow

Estimates of the current prison population range from 100,000 to 200,000, and activists say would-be defectors account for up to 5 percent of the total. Insung Kim of the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights cites a "five-fold rise" in the number of detained defectors over the last 10 years.

Figures provided by the South Korean government appear to support numerous accounts by smugglers, defectors and people living along the border that security has been tightened. In 2009, 2,929 defectors made it to South Korea. Last year, 1,509 did, the lowest number since 2005.

Despite ever more detailed and consistent testimony by defectors and sharper satellite images of the prison camps, there is still little the international community can do to press for change. The government refuses to allow outsiders access to detention facilities to check conditions, and denies the existence of political prison camps altogether.

The main source of information about the prison camps and the conditions inside is the nearly 25,000 defectors living in South Korea, the majority of whom arrived over the last five years. Researchers admit their picture is incomplete at best, and there is reason for some caution when assessing defector accounts.

Jung Gwang-il, who fled the North in 2004 after spending three years at Yodok for alleged espionage, said prisoners were forced to grow corn, peppers and barley, and those who didn't work hard enough had their rations cut. Hunger was so intense that prisoners ate undigested seeds from the feces of other inmates, he said.

In April, they would collect the corpses of those who died over the winter, because they were unable to bury them in the frozen earth.

"To this day I still remember the smell," he said. "Death was a fact of life there." 

Related:

• North Korea calls off talks with South
• American begins 15-year term in 'special prison'
• Analysis: N. Korea blinked but will threaten again

SEOUL, South Korea -- Planned high-level talks between South and North Korea after a nearly six-year hiatus were scrapped on Tuesday, a South Korean government official said, after North Korea objected to the diplomatic rank of the South's chief delegate.

Slideshow: Glimpses into the hermit kingdom of North Korea

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As chief Asia photographer for the Associated Press, David Guttenfelder has had unprecedented access to communist North Korea. Here's a rare look at daily life in the secretive country.

Launch slideshow

North Korea's earlier offer for talks came as a surprise after weeks of bombastic threats to obliterate the South and launch a nuclear strike against the United States.

Kim Hyung-suk, a spokesman for the South's Unification Ministry, told reporters that North Korea had told South Korea that the South's choice for its chief delegate for the talks, the deputy unification minister, was not appropriate.

North Korea had said the South's choice of delegate was a "grave provocation," Kim said.

"Our government regrets North Korea's position," the South Korean spokesman said.

The talks scheduled for Wednesday would have been their first high-level talks in nearly six years. The North is seeking to reopen lucrative business deals and the South is trying to mend ties with its unpredictable and heavily armed neighbor.

Related:

• North, South set stage for high-level talks
• American begins 15-year term in 'special prison'
• Analysis: N. Korea blinked but will threaten again

Unification Ministry / Reuters

A South Korean official shakes hands with Kim Song-hye, a senior official of North Korean Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea and head of a North Korean delegation for an inter-Korean working-level talks.

North and South Korea inched closer to resetting their strained relations Sunday as delegations met face-to-face to lay the foundation for the first cabinet-level talks in six years.

The meeting at the “Truce Village” of Panmunjom in the Korean Demilitarized Zone — so-called because the armistice that brought the 1950-53 Korean War to a close was signed there — signaled that the two countries may be prepared to move beyond months of mutual mistrust.

Officials reportedly reviewed logistics for two days of high-level talks between cabinet ministers scheduled to begin Wednesday in Seoul, according to The Associated Press. Senior government officials have not sat down for a meeting since 2007.

This week’s talks are expected to center on reopening a jointly run factory shut down this spring after the North closed the border and pulled out 53,000 of its workers during a particularly icy period in intergovernmental relations.

Any evidence of friendliness between the Koreas marks a significant counterpoint to recent tensions.

Over the last few months, the North has threatened preemptive nuclear strikes in the Asia-Pacific region and the U.S., raising the ire of officials in the West and alienating their neighbor to the south. Nuclear disarmament is not expected to appear on the agenda at Wednesday’s talks, according to the AP.

Prior to Sunday’s meeting, the South expressed enthusiasm about the potential for reconciliation.

“The development of South and North Korean relations starts form little things and gradual trust-building,” a South Korean delegate, Unification Policy Officer Chun Hae-sung, said before the meeting began, according to the AP.

The first round of dialogue between the Koreas comes on the heels of a closely-watched summit attended by President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping in which both leaders agreed that North Korea’s nuclear program poses a significant threat to the international community.

Security analysts have speculated that Pyongyang’s interest in closer ties with the South may stem from pressure from Beijing.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related:

• Obama, Chinese president talk North Korea, cybersecurity at summit
• Hopeful sign? North, South Korea agree to talks over joint Kaesong factory zone 

This story was originally published on Sun Jun 9, 2013 12:52 PM EDT

Lee Jin-Man / AP, file

South Korean owners who run factories in the stalled South Korea and North Korea's joint Kaesong Industrial Complex, and workers stand just outside of military barricades set up on Unification Bridge near the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War on Thursday, May 30, 2013.

North and South Korea have agreed to hold talks on reopening a jointly run factory complex and possibly other issues, a hopeful sign for ending deteriorating relations that comes just as China and the U.S. prepare for a summit where the North is expected to be a key topic.

North Korea said Thursday it is open to holding talks with South Korea on reopening the Kaesong complex just north of the Demilitarized Zone separating the countries. South Korea's Unification Ministry said in a text message that it "positively accepts" the North's announcement and will announce the date and agenda of talks later.

The decade-old complex, the product of an era of inter-Korean cooperation, shut down gradually this spring after Pyongyang cut border communications and access, then pulled the complex's 53,000 North Korean workers. The last of hundreds of South Korean managers at Kaesong left last month.

The Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea in Pyongyang announced the regime's willingness to hold talks in a statement carried by state media. The committee handles relations with Seoul. The statement was the North's first public response to Seoul's proposal in April to hold government-level talks to discuss the factory complex.

The authoritarian country's isolation has grown since a satellite launch in December, viewed as an effort to test its long-range missile technology, and since it conducted a nuclear test in February. Pyongyang was enraged by the United Nations Security Council sanctions those actions brought, and further angered by U.S.-South Korean military drills that the allies call routine but that the North claims are invasion rehearsals. Pyongyang earlier this year threatened nuclear attacks on Seoul and Washington.

The North Korean statement comes after Choe Ryong Hae, the North's top political officer, met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing in late May and said that Pyongyang was "willing to accept the suggestion of the Chinese side and launch dialogue with all relevant parties." China shares much of America's frustration over North Korea's nuclear ambitions but is concerned about keeping its neighbor and ally stable.

Xi is meeting President Barack Obama in California on Friday, and Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University, said Pyongyang's announcement is timed for those talks.

"North Korea is making it easier for China to persuade the U.S. to get softer on Pyongyang," Koh said.

The North's statement Thursday proposed talks not only about Kaesong, but about resuming cross-border tours suspended since 2008, and restarting the reunions of families divided since the Korean War. It added that the North could restore its Red Cross communication line with South Korea in their truce village if Seoul agrees to talks.

In a Memorial Day speech earlier Thursday, South Korean President Park Geun-hye reiterated her criticism of North Korea's national goals of pursuing nuclear and economic development, saying they can't be achieved simultaneously. Park, who is set to meet with Xi in late June, also called on North Korea to come to talks with Seoul to build trust.

Relations remain tense between the Koreas, which have technically been in a state of war for nearly 60 years because the Korean War ended in 1953 with a truce and not a peace treaty.

North Korea on Wednesday accused Seoul of kidnapping nine North Koreans that South Korean activists call defectors. The group was detained in Laos last month and repatriated via China last week.

Slideshow: Glimpses into the hermit kingdom of North Korea

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As chief Asia photographer for the Associated Press, David Guttenfelder has had unprecedented access to communist North Korea. Here's a rare look at daily life in the secretive country.

Launch slideshow

Related:

• North Korea suspends entry by South Koreans to Kaesong industrial zone
• North Korea fires more missiles, condemns US and South for 'war measures'
• Analysis: North Korea threats predictable but Kim Jong Un is not, analysts say
• Full North Korea coverage on NBCNews.com
• Striking images from North Korea on PhotoBlog

Kim Kwang Hyon / AP

Choe Ryong Hae, center, and other North Korean delegates pose before leaving Pyongyang airport for China on Wednesday.

North Korea says that a "special envoy" for leader Kim Jong Un has left for China.

The North's official Korean Central News Agency said in a short dispatch Wednesday that the envoy was Choe Ryong Hae.

There were no other details. Choe is the North Korea military's top political officer tasked with supervising the 1.2-million-strong force.

China is North Korea's only major political and economic benefactor. Beijing has faced pressure from Washington to use its influence to push Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

Kim Jong Un hasn't visited Beijing since he took power after his father Kim Jong Il died in December 2011.

Choe was one of a handful of new vice marshals North Korea announced last year.

The Associated Press

KCNA via Reuters

As North Korea test-fired yet more missiles on Monday, its leader Kim Jong-un spent time at Pyongyang Myohyangsan Children's Camp at the foot of Mt. Myohyang.

SEOUL -- North Korea fired two short-range missiles on Monday, making six launches in three days, and condemned South Korea for criticizing what Pyongyang said were legitimate military drills.

South Korea's Defense Ministry said North Korea had fired one missile on Monday morning and a second one in the afternoon. Both were fired into the sea off North Korea's east coast, a ministry official said.

The launches come hard on the heels of more than two months of threats from North Korea that it would wage a nuclear war against South Korea and the United States if it were attacked.

The North condemned joint U.S. and South Korean military exercises that ended in late April, as a rehearsal for an attack on its territory.

Slideshow: Glimpses into the hermit kingdom of North Korea

As chief Asia photographer for the Associated Press, David Guttenfelder has had unprecedented access to communist North Korea. Here's a rare look at daily life in the secretive country.

Launch slideshow

"We are conducting intense military exercises to strengthen our defense capacity," North Korea's KCNA news agency quoted the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, the body that handles inter-Korean issues, as saying on Monday.

"Our military is conducting these exercises in order to cope with the mounting war measures from the U.S. and South Korea, which is the legitimate right of any sovereign country."

North Korea frequently fires short-range missiles, although the current spate of launches has drawn criticism from South Korea and the United States after the recent threats from the North.

Seoul on Monday condemned the launches for stoking tension in the region while Beijing, the North's sole major ally, called for restraint.

"These launches are its tactic of signaling to the world that the regime is willing to negotiate now, while at the same time saving face," Kim Yeon-su, a professor at Korea National Defense University in Seoul, which is part of the Defense Ministry, said of North Korea.

Kim said that North Korea had an arsenal of hundreds of short- and medium-range missiles.

There appears to be little prospect of talks between North Korea and the United States as Washington insists that Pyongyang needs to abandon its nuclear weapons program, something the isolated and impoverished state has said it will not do.

Related:

Pentagon: North Korea moving closer to developing nuke that can hit US

American begins 15 years of hard labor in North Korean 'special prison'

North Korea fires projectile into eastern waters

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea fired three short-range missiles from its east coast on Saturday, South Korea's Defense Ministry said, but the purpose of the launches was unknown.

Launches by the North of short-term missiles are not uncommon, but the ministry would not speculate whether these latest launches were part of a test or training exercise.

Slideshow: Glimpses into the hermit kingdom of North Korea

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As chief Asia photographer for the Associated Press, David Guttenfelder has had unprecedented access to communist North Korea. Here's a rare look at daily life in the secretive country.

Launch slideshow

"North Korea fired short-range guided missiles twice in the morning and once in the afternoon off its east coast," an official at the South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman's office said by telephone.

The official said he would not speculate on whether the missiles were fired as part of a drill or training exercise.

"In case of any provocation, the ministry will keep monitoring the situation and remain on alert," he said.

A Japanese government source, quoted by Kyodo news agency, noted the three launches, but said none of the missiles landed in Japan's territorial waters.

Tension on the Korean peninsula has subsided in the past month after running high for several weeks following the imposition of tougher U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang following its third nuclear test in February.

The North had for weeks issued nearly daily warnings of impending nuclear war with the South and the United States.

North Korea conducts regular launches of its Scud short-range missiles, which can hit targets in South Korea.

It conducted a successful launch of a long-range missile last December, saying it put a weather satellite into orbit. The United States and its allies denounced the launch as a test of technology that could one day deliver a nuclear warhead.

During the weeks of high tension, South Korea reported that the North had moved missile launchers into place on its east coast for a possible launch of a medium-range Musudan missile. The Musudan has a range of 3,500 km, putting Japan in range and possibly the U.S. South Pacific island of Guam.

Slideshow: Daily life in North Korea

Elizabeth Dalziel / AP

From work to play, see pictures from inside the secretive country.

Launch slideshow

Reuters

Related stories:

• Analysis: North Korea blinked in missile standoff, but will threaten again
• Pentagon: North Korea moving closer to developing nuke that can hit US
• Full North Korea coverage from NBCNews.com

Yonhap via Reuters

Kenneth Bae, 44, was convicted of "hostile acts" against North Korea.

An American tour operator sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in North Korea has begun his sentence at a “special prison,” state media reported Wednesday.

Kenneth Bae, 44, stood trial last month accused of “hostile acts” against the repressive regime.

Bae, who is from Washington state, was convicted of an attempt to topple the government through “state subversion” according to a brief report on the Korean Central News Agency's website.

“Pae Jun Ho, an American citizen, started his life at a special prison on Tuesday,” the report said, referring to him by his Korean name.

He is one of at least three other U.S. citizens who are also devout Christians to have been detained by North Korea in recent years.

While North Korea's constitution guarantees freedom of religion, in practice only sanctioned services are tolerated.

Washington state Rep. Cindy Ryu told The Herald newspaper in December that Bae might have been doing missionary work in North Korea.

"Many of us are third- and fourth-generation Christians and many of our pastors are originally from North Korea," Ryu said. "We want to visit our home country, but in North Korea you cannot say you are a missionary."

A Facebook page has been set up titled “Remember Ken Bae, Detained in North Korea.”

Related:

• North Korea: Detained American tourist has 'admitted his crime'
• Detained American, Internet freedom on agenda as Google boss visits North Korea
• Full North Korea coverage from NBC News

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea has replaced its hard-line defense chief with a little-known army general, according to a state media report Monday, in what outside analysts call an attempt to install a younger figure meant to solidify leader Kim Jong Un's grip on the powerful military.

Jang Jong Nam's appointment is the latest move since Kim succeeded his late father in late 2011 that observers see as a young leader trying to consolidate control. The announcement comes amid easing animosities after weeks of warlike threats between the rivals, including North Korean vows of nuclear strikes. Pyongyang's rhetorical outbursts against massive U.S.-South Korean war drills and U.N. sanctions over the North's February nuclear test were seen, in part, as a push to portray Kim Jong Un at home as a respected military commander on the world stage.

KCNA - KNS via AP, file

Gen. Kim Kyok Sik, right, stands with then-North Korean leader Kim Jong Il on April 23, 2007. He was reportedly replaced by little-known army General Jang Jong Nam on Monday.

Jang's new role as minister of the People's Armed Forces, however, isn't thought to indicate a potential softening of Pyongyang's stance toward Seoul and Washington any time soon, analysts said. Jang replaces Kim Kyok Sik, the former commander of battalions believed responsible for attacks on South Korea in 2010 that killed 50 South Koreans. Outsiders don't know much about Jang, but analysts said it's unlikely that Kim Jong Un would name a moderate to the post at a time of tension with the outside world.

Mention of Jang's new role was buried in a state media dispatch listing those who attended an art performance with Kim Jong Un. It's not known exactly when Jang was formally appointed to the ministerial post.

The announcement coincided with the beginning Monday of U.S.-South Korean naval exercises involving a nuclear-powered U.S. aircraft carrier. North Korea has criticized the carrier's inclusion in the drills, which it claims are preparations for an invasion of the North. Also, when tensions peaked in March, Washington took the unusual step of announcing that nuclear-capable B-52 and B-2 bombers had participated in the earlier, larger-scale joint drills between the allies. North Korea regularly cites the powerful U.S. nuclear arsenal and Washington's deployment of those assets in the region as justification for its own pursuit of nuclear weapons.

One of the most notable changes from Kim Jong Un was the replacement of the powerful military chief, Ri Yong Ho, who was dismissed because of what Pyongyang called an unspecified illness. Outside observers speculated that Ri, who held a different post than the one Jang has been appointed to, was purged as Kim tried to put his stamp on his government. Ri was also replaced by a little-known general.

Slideshow: Glimpses into the hermit kingdom of North Korea

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As chief Asia photographer for the Associated Press, David Guttenfelder has had unprecedented access to communist North Korea. Here's a rare look at daily life in the secretive country.

Launch slideshow

State media previously identified Jang as head of the army's First Corps and said he pledged allegiance to Kim Jong Un and threatened South Korea in a speech last December. Jang was quoted as saying that his corps would annihilate its enemies and "turn each ravine into their death pitfall when the hour of decisive battle comes."

Kim Jong Un appears to be naming someone from a new generation to bolster his rule of the 1.2 million-member military, said Chang Yong Seok at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University.

Jang is believed to be in 50s, while his predecessor, Kim Kyok Sik, is in his early 70s, according to Seoul's Unification Ministry, which is responsible for dealings with the North.

Related:

Full North Korea coverage from NBC News

Yonhap News Agency via EPA

South Korean President Park Geun-hye waves at Seoul Airport before departing for the United States on May 5.

SEOUL, South Korea – From her tough talk on North Korea to her penchant for large brooches on her power suits, South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye has done plenty to become known as South Korea’s “Iron Lady.”

As South Korea’s first female president – inaugurated just in February – Park expressed admiration for Britain’s Margaret Thatcher during her successful run for president. And after Thatcher's recent death, Park praised how she “revived the British economy and led Britain to an era of hope in the 1980s.”

While her critics see her as cold and aloof – the ice queen – others praise the far tougher line she has taken with Pyongyang than her predecessors.

 “I will not tolerate any action that threatens the lives of our people and the security of our nation,” she warned the North during her inauguration.

She has vowed to hit back hard at any provocations, recently telling South Korean Army officers: “Any country that ignores its starving citizens to focus solely on nuclear weapons and military power will inevitably collapse.” 

Kim Jae-Hwan / AFP – Getty Images

South Korea's new president Park Geun-Hye arrives at the official dinner at the presidential Blue House in Seoul after her inauguration on Feb. 25, 2013.

 The 61-year-old president will meet President Barack Obama in Washington on Tuesday and addresses Congress Wednesday, but the message she’ll bring to Washington is likely to be more nuanced than her domestic rhetoric.

“Whether she will be tougher or softer on North Korea will depend on North Korea,” said former South Korean Prime Minister Han Seung-soo, who remains close to the Blue House, South Korea’s presidential house. “She will try and engage North Korea if North Korea is willing and responsive.”

And reports on Monday that the North has stood down two medium range missiles that had been primed for testing have set an intriguing tone for the summit. 

South Korean political family
She's certainly got the pedigree for a harder line. Park is the daughter of South Korea’s former military strongman Park Chung-hee. He was president for 18 years after seizing power in 1961. 

When she was just 22 her mother was shot dead by a North Korean assassin’s bullet aimed at her father, and for five years she assumed the duties of first lady – until her father also was assassinated, by his own spy chief, in 1979.

Saenuri Party via Reuters

South Korea's Park Geun-hye, center, poses with her father and then-President Park Chung-hee and her mother Yuk Young-soo along with her younger brother and sister in Seoul.

In 2006 Park Geun-hye herself was attacked, a convicted criminal slashing her face while she was meeting voters. She needed 60 stitches during surgery.

Given her avowed admiration for Thatcher, she has often been compared to the former British leader. 

“They are both women of principle, courage and experience as well as strong leadership,” said former Prime Minister Han.

Her father still generates strong and polarized emotions in Korea, and last year she issued a public apology for human rights abuses committed under his rule, though she’s also described the 1961 coup as necessary.

The election of Park, who has never married and has no children, has raised hopes among women in a country that was recently ranked 108^th out of 135 countries in terms of gender equality.

“Gender is not a barrier to high office in Korea anymore,” said Han. He pointed out that Park has sacrificed her personal life for the good of the nation. “She’s a very kind, warm-hearted lady but on making important decisions she’s very firm.”

Park was first elected to South Korea’s National Assembly in 1998, and when you take that together with her family experience in the Blue House, “she’s one of the most experienced presidents we could have,” Han says. 

‘Venomous swish of the skirt’
Her challenges are daunting, with North Korean relations at rock-bottom after weeks of blood-curdling rhetoric from Pyongyang – especially some targeted right at Park.

“The frenzy kicked up by the South Korean warmongers,” thundered the North’s Ministry of People’s Armed Forces, “is in no way irrelevant with the venomous swish of skirt made by the one who again occupies the Blue House.”

CBS Nocutnews via AP

Park Geun-Hye, chairwoman of the Grand National Party, is attacked by an assailant with a box cutter while campaigning ahead of local elections in Seoul on May 20, 2006. Park suffered a 10-centimeter (4-inch) cut on her face.

All links were severed during the recent tensions, including at the jointly-run Kaesong industrial park. And on Friday the last seven South Korean workers remaining returned from Kaesong industrial park after the South sent in two vehicles loaded with $13 million in cash – described as “unpaid wages.”

To many familiar with the ways of the North, that looked like good old tried-and-tested extortion, and was accompanied by warnings from Pyongyang that Seoul should end its “hostile acts and military provocations” if the zone is to re-open.

Those “hostile acts” appear to be a reference to a joint South Korea-U.S. anti-submarine drill that began Monday in the Yellow Sea and lasts until Friday.

For now, the South is describing the shutdown of the industrial zone as a “suspension” and has not cut the power supply, which originates in the South.

“It’s a difficult time,” said Han, “but she’s well prepared.”

Related:

• North Korea removes missiles from launch site
• North Korea rejects talks with South's 'puppet regime'
• South Koreans evacuate Kaesong joint industrial complex with all they can carry