KOREAN PENINSULA: First Female South Korean President Faces North Korea Crisis

(SEOUL, South Korea) — Park Geun-hye became South Korea’s first female president Monday, returning to the presidential mansion where she grew up with her dictator father. Park’s last stint in the Blue House was bookended by tragedy: At 22, she cut short her studies in Paris to return to Seoul and act as President Park Chung-hee’s first lady after an assassin targeting her father instead killed her mother; she left five years later after her father was shot and killed by his spy chief during a drinking party. As president, Park will face stark divisions both in South Korean society and with rival North Korea, which detonated an underground nuclear device about two weeks ago. South Koreans worry about a growing gap between rich and poor, and there’s pressure for her to live up to her campaign suggestion that she can return the country to the strong economic growth her strong-man father oversaw. North Korea’s atomic test will also present a challenge to her vow to soften Seoul’s current hard-line approach to its northern rival.

Pyongyang, Washington, Beijing and Tokyo are all watching to see if Park pursues an ambitious engagement policy meant to ease five years of animosity on the divided peninsula or if she sticks with the tough stance of her fellow conservative predecessor, Lee Myung-bak. Park’s decision is important because it will likely set the tone of the larger diplomatic approach that Washington and others take in stalled efforts to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions. Park technically took over as the clock struck midnight. Her swearing-in ceremony later Monday was to be attended by tens of thousands, including dignitaries such as U.S. National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso. South Korean superstar PSY, who rose to surprising global fame last year with his song “Gangnam Style,” was set to perform. Park’s first weeks in office will be complicated by North Korea’s warning of unspecified “second and third measures of greater intensity,” a