Pinay wins seat in Korea congress

MANILA, Philippines - A native of Davao City has been elected as a lawmaker in South Korea’s parliament, a report on ABS-CBNnews.com said yesterday.

Filipina TV host and actress Jasmine Lee, 35, is the first naturalized Korean citizen to win a seat in the National Assembly, the report said.

She was number 15 in the ruling Saenuri Party’s list of candidates for proportional representation, it added.

The party, headed by Park Geun-hye, daughter of the late Korean president Park Chung-hee and one of the leading candidates in the presidential elections in December, won a majority of 152 seats in the 300-strong assembly, as shown by election results yesterday.

The article further said that Saenuri Party had

included a naturalized citizen high on its list of proportional representatives in order to get the support of a majority of the 110,000 foreigners who are now Korean citizens.

The National Assembly of South Korea is said to be similar to the Philippine Congress, where most of the members are elected in districts across the country. Some 54 seats are also elected through proportional representation, similar to the Philippines’ party-list system, the report said.

Lee, an advocate for multicultural families and the Filipino community in South Korea, has often been criticized by anti-multicultural groups in Korea.

She and her husband Lee Dong-ho met when she was still a college student at Ateneo de Davao.

Her husband died in 2010.