China communist party congress to open Nov.8

South Korean first women President Park Geun-Hye

 

Park Geun-Hye, the daughter of South Korea’s late military ruler, will be sworn in as the country’s first female president on Monday in a ceremony shadowed by North Korea’s recent nuclear test. challenges, including the belligerent regime in the North, a slowing economy and soaring welfare costs in one of the world’s most rapidly aging societies. Park inaugural speech is expected to focus on job creation, welfare expansion and national defence, while appealing for national unity at a time of growing concern with income and wealth disparity. Park had campaigned on a promise of greater, “trust-based” engagement with Pyongyang and her speech will be closely parsed for any indication of how she intends to handle North Korea at the beginning of her five-year term.Park is taking office a little more than 50 years after her father, Park Chung-He, seized power in a military coup. He went on to rule the country with an iron fist for the next 18 years until his eventual assassination, and remains a divisive figure credited with dragging the country out of poverty but reviled for his regime’s human rights abuses. His daughter’s political career has always been shadowed by her father’s legacy a fact that has played both to her advantage and her detriment.
Park publicly acknowledged the excesses of her father’s regime during her campaign and apologized to the families of its victims. Park’s mother murdered five years before her father, and she has never married or had children.She is adored by older conservative Koreans, who feel she shares her father’s leadership qualities and view her as something of an ill-fated princess who lost both parents to assassination but managed to rise above the tragedy.