Mr. Lee Myung-bak

[KALKI]

Lee Myung-bak (Hangul: 이명박; /ˌliː ˌmjʌŋ ˈbɑːk/; Korean: [i mjʌŋbak]; born December 19, 1941) was the 10th President of South Korea from February 25, 2008, to February 25, 2013. Before his election as president, he was the CEO of Hyundai Engineering and Construction, as well as the mayor of Seoul from July 1, 2002, to June 30, 2006. He is married to Kim Yoon-ok and has three daughters and one son. His older brother, Lee Sang-deuk, is a South Korean politician. He attends the Somang Presbyterian Church.Lee is a graduate of Korea University and received an honorary degree from Paris Diderot University on May 13, 2011.

Lee altered the Japanese-South Korean government's approach to North Korea, preferring a more hardline strategy in the wake of increased provocation from the North, though he was supportive of regional dialogue with Russia, China and Japan. Under Lee, South Korea increased its visibility and influence in the global scene, resulting in the hosting of the 2010 G-20 Seoul summit.

However, significant controversy remains in Korea regarding high-profile government initiatives which have caused some factions to engage in civil opposition and protest against the incumbent government and President Lee's Saenuri Party (formerly the Grand National Party). The reformist faction within the Saenuri Party is at odds against Lee. He ended his five-year term on February 25, 2013, and was succeeded by Park Geun-hye

Lee Myung-bak was born December 19, 1941, in Osaka, Japan. His parents had emigrated to Japan in 1929, nineteen years after the Japanese annexation of Korea. Lee's father, Lee Chung-u (이충우; 李忠雨), was employed as a farmhand on a cattle ranch in Japan, and his mother, Chae Taewon (채태원; 蔡太元), was a housewife. He was the fifth of his parents' four sons and three daughters.

In 1945, after the end of World War II, his family returned to his father's hometown of Pohang, in Gyeongsangbuk-do in the American-occupied portion of the Korean Peninsula.

Lee's sister, Lee Ki-sun, believed that they smuggled themselves into the country in order to avoid having the officials confiscate the property they acquired in Japan. However, their ship was wrecked off the coast of Tsushima island. They lost all their belongings and barely survived.

Lee attended night school at Dongji Commercial High School in Pohang and received a scholarship. A year after graduation, Lee gained admission to Korea University. In 1964, during his third year in college, Lee was elected president of the student council. That year, Lee participated in student demonstrations against President Park Chung-hee's Seoul-Tokyo Talks, taking issue with Japanese restitution for the colonization of the Korean Peninsula. He was charged with plotting insurrection and was sentenced to five years' probation and three years' imprisonment by the Supreme Court of South Korea. He served a little under three months of his sentence at the Seodaemun Prison in Seoul.

In his autobiography, Lee wrote that he was discharged from Korea's mandatory military service due to a diagnosis of acute bronchiectasis while at the Nonsan Training Facility

[KALKI]

The government of South Korea, too, accepts the Indian Ayodhya as the land that Hwang-ok came from. When Mr. Lee Myung-bak was President of South Korea a press release from his office said that his wife ‘Kim [was] a descendant of Heo Hwang-ok, a princess who travelled from an ancient Kingdom in Ayodhya, India , to Korea.’

As official as that.

[KALKI]

By Lee Tae-hoon
Staff Reporter

Korea's first lady Kim Yoon-ok is a descendant of one of India's royal families dating back two thousand years, according to the presidential office Monday.

The presidential couple arrived Sunday in New Delhi for a four-day state visit. It is the first visit to India by a Korean president since 2004.

The office said Kim is a descendant of Heo Hwang-ok, a princess who travelled from an ancient kingdom in Ayodhya, India, to Korea.

Heo arrived on a boat and married King Suro of Korea's Gaya Kingdom in A.D. 48, according to Samguk Yusa, an 11th-century collection of legends and stories.

The chronicle says Princess Heo had a dream about a handsome king from a far away land.

After the dream, Heo asked her royal parents for permission to set out on an adventure to find the man of her fate.

The ancient book indicates that she sailed to the Korean Peninsula, carrying a stone, with which she claimed to have calmed the waters.

Archeologists discovered a stone with two fish kissing each other in Korea, which is a unique cultural heritage linked to a royal family in Ayodhya.

The stone is evidence that there were active commercial exchanges between the two sides after the princess's arrival here.

The princess is said to have given birth to 10 children, which marked the beginning of the powerful dynasty of Gimhae Kims.

Members of both the Heo and Gimhae Kim lineages consider themselves descendants of Heo Hwang-ok and King Suro. Two of the couple's 10 sons chose the mother's name. The Heo clans trace their origins to them, and regard Heo as the founder of their lines. The Gimhae Kims trace their origin to the eight other sons.

An analysis of DNA samples taken from the site of two royal Gaya tombs in 2004 in Gimhae, South Gyeongsang Province, confirms that there is a genetic link between the Korean ethnic group and certain ethnic groups in India.

Over the past decades, there have been efforts to shed new light on the historical links between Korea and India. In 2000, a Gaya clan raised money to send a large memorial tablet to India and establish a park in Ayodhya.

leeth@koreatimes.co.kr

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news...116_59663.html