A Scientist and a Woman:
Yi So-Yeon, Korea’s first astronaut

 

– Clicking heels echo through the museum at the Korean Aerospace Research Institute (KARI). Just inside the doors is a life-size model of Korea’s first astronaut, a woman, Yi So-yeon. Only two other countries (Iran and the U.K.) have had a female as their first space traveler, and the KARI Space Travel Museum highlights Yi with smiling photos next to star charts and historical rockets.

 

The real Yi turns the corner, sporting funky green-striped heels expertly coordinated with a red and white, cape-style jacket. She smiles as she approaches and jokingly poses beside the model of herself. Some people call her a star, but she balks at that title. If you ask her, she’s a scientist, a woman, a daughter. After spending months in training and 10 days in space to become the first Korean to ever ride a rocket away from earth, most people would call her an astronaut. She’d agree with that, too.

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“Yi So-yeon was born in Gwangju and spent the first 15 years of her life living among the people of the city. When she began studying at Gwangju Science High School, she also began nurturing what has been a life-long passion for science and learning.”

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Throughout undergraduate and post-graduate course work at the renowned Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Yi lived in the lab. It wasn’t until she had become burnt out from sleeping in “clean rooms” that she learned about the Korean government’s competition to send someone to space.

After an exhaustive nationwide selection process and 15 months of training in Russia, Yi was selected to represent Korea aboard the Russian Soyuz TMA-12 along with two Russian cosmonauts for a 10-day space mission. They launched on April 8, 2008.

Yi settles into a comfortable chair and bats away a prepared list of questions before beginning to recall her time in space fondly. While living in the International Space Station, she performed 18 different experiments, including studying the effects of gravity on the pressure in her eyes and the shape of her face. She comments on the value of image in Korea as she described taking daily photos of herself. She encourages women to not let concerns for image get in the way of doing their job.

“It was hard, but I don’t have to worry about (my) puffy face at all. Even though I had a puffy face and pony tail, I could smile in front of the camera.

There was one great role model of mine in Russia, a female astronaut, Peggy Whitson. Thanks to her, I learned when I should be a woman, when I should be a scientist, when I should be an astronaut, when I should be a teacher, and when I should be a good daughter. Women should not confuse the right time. In your office, you don’t have to be a woman. You should be a good worker. But after your work, you should be a pretty and sexy woman. You have enough time, even more than enough. So, I learned that timing is important,” said the accomplished astronaut and woman.

It’s clear that Yi puts to practice the value of a balanced life. While traveling in space was a “really cool” experience, her real goal in becoming an astronaut was for science.

“The only reason I applied for the astronaut position was to go to space for the experiments, not to be a star,” she says. Now as a Senior Researcher at KARI, she continues to work on aerospace research, and was recently named one of the 15 Asian Scientists to Watch by Asian Scientist Magazine.

She describes her current research using worms to study the effects of long-term zero-gravity. “I’m working with small, small worms we call ‘C. Elegans’. We try to simulate space environments with worms to try to expect what will happen to people when we stay in space for more than two years.  Nowadays, if we want to go to Mars, to do that, we have to stay outside of earth for more than two years.”

Although she lives so much of her life in the lab with worms for company, she smiles easily and laughs often.  “When I was up there, I could see the earth and think, ‘Wow, that’s where I was.’  I’m an engineer, so I think about the probability to be born in a place, and it’s a really, really low probability to be born in Korea. And I realize how lucky it is. Because if you were born in Africa, you cannot be sure if you will survive or not. Compared to those kinds of huge land space, Korea is too small. But compared to maybe 200 countries on Earth, Korea is maybe in the top 90 percent. I realized I should appreciate that type of huge luck.”

She believes in making your own luck, too.  She encourages young people and adults to examine themselves first, and complain later. “It’s so surprising. The person who did their best, they are very easy to blame themselves. But the person who didn’t do their best, they very easily complain or blame other people. Before complaining, you should think about yourself first. You should think about whether you did your best or not first, and then if you didn’t do your best, you should do first and then complain.”

As time and questions run on, Yi folds her hands and patiently, even passionately, tells of being surprised and honored to be invited as adjunct professor at her alma mater, KAIST. She admits to thinking she’s not smart enough to be a professor there. She confides that she learned English through the first-generation online messaging service ICQ, and challenges young people to first find their passion in life and then use English study as a tool to get there, if it applies.

“To do my own job, I need English. But so many people try to do English first. That’s not good. I think you have your own object; you have your own dream. To make it, if you need English, you should do that. Then it’s easy to learn English, I think. … Language is a kind of potential or something to support yourself, not the main job.”

She seems surprised when time runs out and says her goodbyes amid quips about sending her photos to cute single men. The staccato of her heels fades across the KARI campus as she returns to her lab and her worms.

Article by Andrea Galvez
Photos by Jose Antonio Nigro

(Originally posted on January 5, 2012)

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