South Korea's First Female President Park Geun-Hye

THE newly elected President of South Korea, Park Geun-Hye, will return to the presidential Blue House which is, incidentally, her childhood home.

   Ms Park was nine years old when her father, Park Chung-Hee, came to power through a military coup in 1961 which set the stage for 18 years of authoritarian rule. She served as her father's first lady during the 1970s after her mother's assassination in 1974.

Korean opinion on his rule remains highly polarised, and many see in Ms Park only the embodiment of her father.

   State-run Korean Central News agency has said "a dictator's bloodline cannot change away from its viciousness".

   While this has cast a fairly dark cloud over a lot of Ms Park's electoral campaign, the presence of her father's legacy has, at times, proved an asset, as many older South Koreans hope she will evoke the strong charisma of her father and thus settle the country's economic and security woes.

   The 60-year-old President who has a degree in engineering from Sogang University in Seoul has been described by voters as "good-hearted, calm and trustworthy" with the power to "save our country".

   Citing Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel amongst her role models, her presidency shatters the bias surrounding women's rights in a country that came 108th out of 135 countries in a survey on gender equality; one place below the United Arab Emirates.

   She has made history as the first female president in Northeast Asia, a feat made all the more remarkable considering South Korea is a country where women continue to face widespread sexism, huge income gaps and few opportunities to climb business or political ladders.

   She has never married and has no children, generating an image of selfless daughter of Korea which is hugely attractive to many voters who are tired of corruption scandals surrounding their first families.

   She changed her campaign slogan from "National Happiness Campaign" to "A Prepared Woman President", however this maternal political image is at odds with that pushed by her critics of an aloof aristocrat they call the 'ice queen' with a political career founded in privilege.

   She has certainly shown a tough streak in the past, demonstrated particularly in 2006 when a convicted criminal slashed her face as she was shaking hands with voters, opening a gash that needed 60 stitches during surgery.

   Kim Eun-Ju, executive director of the Centre for Korean Women and Politics supports this image of the new President, seeing Park as a female political leader "only in biological terms". "For the past 15 years, Park has shown little visible effort to help women in politics or anywhere else as a policymaker," she said.