After a long stretch of twists and turns, President Park Geun-hye is finally back in clover, with her popularity soaring immediately after her three-day trip to China last week, giving her a much needed boost for the second half of the remaining term.

According to local pollster Realmeter, Park’s job rating surged to 50.4 percent last week, recovering the 50 percent mark for first time in 10 months. The day she attended a massive military parade in Beijing on Thursday, her approval rating hit a new record this year at 54 percent, a 20 percentage point increase just in two weeks, according to Gallup Korea.

With security her traditional forte, Park is widely expected to use her popularity to push ahead with her reform drive to revitalize the sluggish economy, despite objections from the opposition.

Riding on her popularity in full swing, Park on Monday visited Daegu, the nation’s third-largest city, where she holds a strong support base, and vowed that she would keep this momentum and use it to carry out diplomatic and domestic tasks.

“I believe that I should vigorously push forward for peace and the stability of the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia on the diplomatic front and also to achieve reform for economic revitalization and for the future of the nation on the domestic front (at the same time),” she said at a meeting with local officials in Daegu.

Calling it a rare phenomenon for a president who already passed his or her midway point of a single five-year term to recover the 50 percent mark, experts, however, remained cautious on Park’s remaining two years in office.

“I believe it is a passing phenomenon contributed mainly by the breakthrough in inter-Korean talks,” said Yoon Seong-yi, political professor at Kyung Hee University in Seoul.

Citing her weakness of being uncommunicative and a unilateral leader, the professor said she still faces lingering challenges to revive the nation’s economy and achieve labor reforms and economic democratization aimed at making the market a fair ground for all.

With her presidency passing the midway mark and attention fast shifting to general elections next year, Park also sounded desperate in pushing her reform drive, the centerpiece of her state agenda.

“We have no time to waste or wait,” she said, urging representatives of labor and business who returned to the negotiation table to make concessions on labor reforms.

“We must reach an agreement for coexistence, with strong determination that this year is the last chance for labor reforms.”

Park has begun her third year in office on a sour note, as controversy loomed over a political scandal involving her close aides. The outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome further consolidated antagonists from last year’s Sewol ferry sinking tragedy, as the public condemned the government’s early response. Her leadership and her lack of communication with the public came under fire, further dragging her popularity down to a record low of 29 percent in June.

But ironically it was North Korea’s mine blast in the demilitarized zone and the military tensions between the Koreas that shifted the spotlight back on Park’s leadership. Her hardline stance against North Korea’s provocation and her approach toward the reclusive regime’s volatility brought Seoul into an advantageous position in the breakthrough talks late last month.

With North Korea expressing regret over the mine blast, and Seoul cementing closer ties with Pyongyang’s traditional ally and the biggest benefactor, Beijing, at the summit and military parade this month, conservatives here say that Park has brought a paradigm shift in Northeast Asian politics.

Calling it the “Park Geun-hye doctrine,” right-leaning media and her supporters claimed that she has presented a vision to resolve North Korea’s nuclear ambition through the peaceful unification of two Koreas.

By Cho Chung-un (christory@heraldcorp.com)