In February, South Korea saw the induction of its first woman president: Park Geun-hye. A lifelong politician, she is the daughter of the country’s former dictator, the authoritarian Park Chung-hee, who oversaw the ‘economic miracle’ years of the 1960s and 1970s. Park Geun-hye has never married – a rarity in South Korean society – though she was forced to serve as her father’s ‘first lady’ after her mother’s death in an assassination attempt aimed at Chung-hee.
The conservative Park’s ascension to the Blue House is certainly a victory for Korean women, breaking the patriarchal Confucian mould in a society long marred by some of the most serious gender inequality in the industrial world.
