S.Korea`s 1st female pres. draws interest from US media, netizens

S.Korea`s 1st female pres. draws interest from US media, netizens. December. 22, 2012 00:46. baek@donga.com.

Major U.S. media outlets and Internet users are viewing with keen interest South Korea`s election of its first female president, Park Geun-hye.

The New York Times on Thursday carried a column written by Professor Lee Sung-yoon, a Korean Peninsula expert at Tufts University, saying Park “will also become the first elected female leader anywhere in the Confucian civilization, which consists of China, Japan, North and South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Vietnam, and makes up nearly a quarter of the world’s population.”

He also said “cracking the citadel of masculinity in a culture steeped in millenniums of male chauvinism is historic. Simply by winning, … Park instantly has become a role model for hundreds of millions of women across East Asia.”

Web users in the U.S. also expressed envy about Park, whose country has a democratic history far shorter than that of America. One user with the Internet ID “cinnamonrose28” left a comment under a Reuter’s news article, saying, “I am so ecstatic to know that South Korea has chosen a female president. I believe that someday the U.S. will have a woman president because it`s long overdue." User “cmckeonjr” also said in a comment to a Washington Post article that the U.S. is still waiting for a woman to run for president.

Joseph Sternberg, an editorial writer of the Wall Street Journal, wrote in his column “Madam President” that outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “may take some encouragement from this week`s news from Seoul.” Noting that both Park and Clinton got their start in politics as first lady in the 1970s and entered electoral politics as lawmakers, Sternberg cited parallels between the two women. "If Clinton visits Seoul, she and Ms. Park might have much political strategy to discuss.”