Ko Sun, 29, a boxing champion, will be the first South Korean astronaut. In 2008 he will fly with a pair of Russian cosmonauts to the International Space Station
The name of South Korea's first astronaut, who will fly on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station early next year, was announced on Wednesday this week. This is a former amateur boxing champion, who currently works as a researcher in the aeronautics industry - his name is Ko San and he is 29 years old. When he flies in April 2008, he will be the first Korean in space, said South Korea's Minister of Science.
Ko, who won a bronze medal in the 2004 World Amateur Boxing Championship, will serve as a cargo specialist and fly together with two Russian cosmonauts on a six-seven-day mission to the International Space Station. Ko and a nanotechnology engineer from Seoul named Yi So-yeon were the two finalists. Yi will return to Russia together with Ko and will be able to complete the training and serve as his backup, the Minister of Science said. The two were chosen from over 36 thousand candidates.
South Korea plans to complete its first space center in Gohwang (470 km south of Seoul) at the end of the year, a step designed to lay the technical and scientific infrastructure for space operations in the coming decades. Since 1992, Seoul has launched 11 satellites, most of them for ocean observations as well as communication satellites. The satellites were manufactured in Korea, but were launched from other countries with space launch infrastructure.
