SOUTH KOREA has elected Park Geun-hye, a 60-year-old conservative, as president for the coming five years. The candidate is from the same party, the Saenuri party, as the incumbent, Lee Myung-bak. She is the daughter of Park Chung-hee, the dictator who set South Korea on the path of break-neck development, seizing power in 1961 and assassinated by his security services in 1979. Ms Park thus becomes South Korea’s first woman president. Curiously, she also has the distinction of having once been the country’s first lady, following the assassination of her mother in 1974 by a North Korea sympathiser. Having grown up in the Blue House, South Korea's presidential mansion, she now returns there.
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