The President of the Republic of Korea Ms Park Geun-hye will pay an official state visit to Laos on September 9 in response to an invitation from Lao President, Mr. Bounnhang Vorachit, the President’s Office announced yesterday.
Ms Park Geun-hye will visit Laos to further enhance the relationship and cooperation between Laos and Korea.
Ms Park Geun-hye will also attend the 18th Asean-Republic of Korea Summit which will be hosted by Laos in the capital this week.
Ms Park Geun-hye is the 18th President of the Republic of Korea. She was sworn in as South Korea’s first female president in 2013.
President Park Geun-hye was born on February 2, 1952, in Daegu, in the North Gyeongsang province of South Korea.
Ms Park Geun-hye graduated from Seoul’s Sacred Heart Girls’ High School in 1970, going on to receive a bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering from Sogang University in 1974.
Park received honourary doctoral degrees from the Chinese Culture University, in Taiwan in 1987; Pukyong National University and KAIST in 2008; and Sogang University in 2010.
Park was elected a Grand National Party assembly woman for Dalseong, Daegu, in 1998 by election, and three more times in the same electoral district between 1998 and 2008, being the incumbent assemblywoman until April 2012.
In 1998, she was appointed vice chairperson of the recently established Grand National Party, and six years later, she won election as the Party’s chairperson (2004-2006).
Following her service as first lady, Park continued to flourish in the South Korean political world, becoming appointed vice chairperson of the Grand National Party in 1998.
Also in 1998, she began serving as a member of the National Assembly. She would be re-elected four times thereafter, serving in five consecutive national assemblies.
In 2003, Park became chairperson of the GNP’s presidential election committee.
Park was also a member of the Korean National Assembly, and served four complete consecutive parliamentary terms as a constituency representative between 1998 and 2012. Park started her fifth term as a proportional representative in June 2012.
Following a historic election on December 19, 2012, Park became South Korea’s first female president. She was inaugurated in February 2013.
Her father, Park Chung-hee, was the President of South Korea from 1963 to 1979.
In 2013 and 2014, Park was named the World’s 11th Most Powerful Woman and the Most Powerful Woman in East Asia by Forbes Magazine’s list of The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women.
In 2014, Park was named the World’s 46th Most Powerful Person by Forbes magazine’s List of The World’s Most Powerful People, the third highest South Korean on the list, after Lee Kun-hee and Lee Jae-yong.
Source: Vientiane Times
