South Korean President Park Geun-hye called Friday for patience as North Korea shows no sign of coming to the negotiating table to discuss ways to ease rising tension on the divided Korean Peninsula.

"Seoul will patiently seek dialogue and cooperation with the North," Park said in a video message to hundreds of business executives at a Korea Night function on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.

Park, who took office in early 2013, attended last year's WEF but skipped this year's session because of demanding domestic schedules.

Park's comments in Switzerland came just days after she called on her officials to try to create unspecified conditions for North Korea to come forward for talks.

Tension persists between the two divided Korean countries as one side accuses the other of insincerity.

North Korea remains silent on South Korea's recent proposal to hold ministerial talks in January to discuss such issues as the reunion of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.

North Korea instead has repeatedly pressed South Korea to scrap its annual military exercises with the United States, and to take steps to stop its people from sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets to North Korea by balloons.

On Wednesday, South Korea dismissed as a propaganda North Korea's demand that Seoul suspend its planned military exercises with Washington before resuming inter-Korean talks.

The two Koreas last held high-level talks in February in 2014. They had agreed to hold high-level contact between late October and early November during a surprise visit to South Korea by a high-powered North Korean delegation. But the North later backtracked on the deal in protest of the leaflets.

For years, North Korean defectors in the South and conservative activists have flown propaganda leaflets to the North via balloons to help encourage North Koreans to eventually rise up against the Pyongyang regime. (Yonhap)