"“I touched her hand, I touched her hand!” shouted one man, Lee Kyung-su, 72, a retired engineer.
Later, in a calmer moment, he tried to explain why she elicited such strong emotions. “She lives alone, doesn’t have selfish desires and has no family to corrupt her,” he said. “She has given herself to her country.”
Even in South Korea’s feisty and competitive brand of democracy, which has produced its share of strong personalities and charismatic leaders, Ms. Park holds a special status. The strong-willed daughter of a slain dictator, an unmarried woman seeking power in a firmly patriarchal society, a critic of social inequality in a party beholden to big business, Ms. Park, 60, can often seem larger than life despite her small stature and quiet demeanor.
Now, after having succeeded in leading her revamped Saenuri Party, or New Frontier, the successor to the governing Grand National Party, to a surprisingly strong showing in parliamentary elections last week, she also stands a good chance of becoming the country’s next president. That would make her the first woman to be the democratically elected leader of a nation in this economically vibrant but male-dominated part of Asia.
“She is part Bismarck and part Evita,” said Ahn Byong-jin, author of “The Park Geun-hye Phenomenon.” “She wants to be like her father by being a strong leader who looks out for her people, but she also tries to be a woman who is sympathetic to the people’s problems.”
La suite:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/21/world/asia/park-geun-hye-an-unsoiled-leader-in-south-koreas-rowdy-democracy.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120421
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