Whether or not she is truly “her father’s daughter”, time will tell. But the North Koreans will certainly take notice...I think they will try to test her!
Agreed on both points.
Korean politics are brutal. I don't think Americans have any concept of what it takes for anyone to succeed in Korean political life, and it's much worse for a woman.
My guess is that the new President Park fully expects the North Koreans to test her, and if/when it happens, she will respond with “kimchi temper” to make clear she is not weak.
Those who know Koreans well are quite aware of what “kimchi temper” means, and they know that tiny, demure, and petite Korean women who look like and usually act like cute kittens are perfectly capable of turning into roaring tigers when provoked.
Obviously, North Korean men also know that from their own experience with their Korean wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters. Kimchi temper is not confined to the South. On the other hand, I think the rest of the world may get a very considerable shock when seeing how the new President Park responds to some sort of North Korean provocation.
Roll Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Margaret Thatcher, Phyllis Schlafly, and several other fiery female English-speaking politicians up into a ball, put the composite woman on steroids, and that might give an approximation of how we can expect the new President Park to respond to a deliberate provocation from North Korea. That nation is, after all, ruled by the grandson of the man who sent the North Korean commandos who killed her mother, who tried repeatedly to kill her father, and who may or may not have had a hand in the action by the head of the South Korean CIA who finally succeeded in killing her father.
Even apart from that, pondering the prospect of a newly elected 60-year-old female president of South Korea tolerating deliberate insults from a man half her age shows how little likelihood there is that the new President Park will put up with nonsense from north of the border.
While we might see some tolerance for a while from the Blue House (the South Korean presidential palace) -- after all, she will need some time to get her administration organized, and there is a certain cultural inclination to ignore mild insults on the ground that the person hurling insults is not worthy of a response -- a serious attack on South Korea cannot be tolerated even in the short term without running the risk of appearing weak. Longer term, I suspect the new President Park is already planning how to respond to the inevitable North Korean provocation, while at the same time trying to “engage” the North Koreans to show that she is not a warmonger and responded with anger only after making a legitimate effort to try to deal with the North Koreans in a reasonable manner.
Let's just say Koreans have long memories and are quite capable of using long knives when needed.