{"id":17453,"date":"2014-08-14T18:08:41","date_gmt":"2014-08-14T18:08:41","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-10-15T14:16:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T14:16:21","slug":"south-korea-s-first-and-only-astronaut-yi-so-yeon-resigns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=17453","title":{"rendered":"South Korea’s first and only astronaut Yi So-yeon resigns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) says female astronaut Yi So-yeon’s letter of resignation has been accepted.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yi, who is now 36, traveled to the International Space Station (ISS) on board a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2008, becoming the first Korean in space.<\/p>\n

She was the runner-up in the government-run Korean Astronaut Program<\/strong>, but was chosen after Russia asked for a replacement for the original candidate, Ko Sun.<\/p>\n

He was accused of removing sensitive reading materials during training – and later apologized for his actions.<\/p>\n

A bio-systems engineer, Ms. Yi conducted 18 scientific experiments in space and had voiced the hope that people in North Korea to be “happy” about her historic space mission.<\/p>\n

She has been on a leave of absence since 2012 while studying in the US, and has now resigned from the space program for personal reasons.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a June interview with Korean newspaper Dong-A Ilbo, in which she announced her resignation, Ms. Yi said she was worried about her career prospects.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

“I feel bad that I’m the one always blamed for the failure of the space business – even though there are problems with government policy toward the space business,” she said.<\/p>\n

South Korea reportedly paid $AU29 million for Ms Yi’s mission, prompting criticism her mission was an expensive publicity stunt.<\/p>\n

One conservative pundit has labelled her a ‘quitter’, while KARI is facing accusations it had chosen the wrong person for the expensive project and wasted taxpayers’ money.<\/p>\n

Source Yonhap<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) says female astronaut Yi So-yeon’s letter of resignation has been accepted. Yi, who is now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[2124,1,1012],"tags":[2125,2120],"class_list":["post-17453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","category-news","category-travel","tag-interview","tag-travel"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-highlighted-post":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-small":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x90.jpg","colormag-featured-image":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-default-news":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","colormag-featured-image-large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"Admin","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"2","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) says female astronaut Yi So-yeon’s letter of resignation has been accepted. Yi, who is now","magazineBlocksPostCategories":["Interviews","News","Travel"],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":166,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":2,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"medium":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg",113,150,true]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"Admin","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=1"},"magazine_blocks_comment":2,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"Interviews<\/a> News<\/a> Travel<\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}