President-elect Park Geun Hye’s approach toward North Korea remains enigmatic, at best, on the eve of her assumption of the stewardship of the management of the Republic of Korea as head of state. It was only on two occasions during the months that preceded the presidential election held on December 19 last year when, in an article by her name carried by the September-October 2011 issue of the bimonthly Foreign Affairs, entitled “A New Kind of Korea: Building Trust between Seoul and Pyongyang,” and through a press conference that she held on November 5, 2012, in her capacity as the presidential candidate of the Saenuri (New World) Party, she personally addressed her thoughts about how she was going to deal with North Korea when elected. On both occasions, it was what she termed a “trustpolitik” that she introduced as the cornerstone of a “new” policy toward North Korea that she had under consideration in the context of a “bolder and more creative approach” to the issue at hand. She found fault equally with both the North and the South of Korea for what she called a “lack of trust that has long undermined attempts at genuine reconciliation” between them. She did say that her ‘trustpolitik’ did not mean “unconditional or one-sided trust without verification,” but she was unquestionably placing a larger amount of responsibility to build a base of the ‘trust’ between two Koreas on the shoulders of the South by asking the South to “adapt its past strategies toward North Korea.” She said that she would seek what she termed a “new alignment policy” which would “entail assuming a tough line against North Korea sometimes and a flexible policy open to negotiations other times.” She did call on the South to “immediately ensure that Pyongyang understand the costs of provocation, should North Korea launch another military strike against the South.” However, she, at the same time, did not rule out her hope that North Korea “take steps toward genuine reconciliation, such as reaffirming its commitment to existing agreements,” in response to her own assurance that Seoul would “match” the Northern efforts. She hoped that her “alignment policy” would, over time, “reinforce” her version of “trustpolitik.” However, it looks by all means a case of easier said than done again. Recent developments in the relations between Pyongyang and Seoul as well as the rest of the international community highlighted by North Korea’s renewed, and emboldened, nuclear brinkmanship are strongly indicative of the possibility that President-elect Park Geun Hye’s vision for her “trustpolitik” is more likely to wind up turning into a rehash, at least for an indefinite period of time, if not for good, of the vision of her predecessor, President Lee Myong Bak, that had failed to be airborne due to the North’s refusal to accept. North Korea had categorically rejected President Lee’s offer that the South would provide the North with an economic aid package of a scale sufficient to help the North raise its per capita income to $3,000 in exchange for the North’s abandonment of its nuclear ambition and acceptance of a policy of opening and reform a la China.