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Ex-lawmaker named person of year by George Washington alumni
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Kim Jung-sook
By Kim Se-jeong
By Kim Se-jeong
Kim Jung-sook, 69, a former lawmaker and the president of International Council of Women (ICW), has been selected as person of the year by the George Washington University Alumni Association in Korea.
The association chose Kim based on her contribution to building women’s capacities as decision-makers in Korea and her leadership at the ICW.
The award ceremony and the association’s year-end party will take place at the Millennium Seoul Hilton on Monday.
Kim was elected to lead the ICW in May this year. Apart from that, she is running the Korean Institute for Women and Politics, which she founded in 1989.
She was a National Assembly member between 1996 and 2004, representing the ruling conservative party which is now the Saenuri Party.
As a lawmaker, she led efforts to revise the law on equal employment between genders in 2000, as well as another law on punishing sex crime offenders and protecting victims of sex trafficking.
She also spearheaded the effort for political parties to have the same number of male and female candidates for the Assembly’s proportional representative seats.
Kim also advocated for the abolishment of the “hoju system,” a patriarchal family system which by law permitted exclusive rights to husbands. The system was abolished in 2008, four years after she left politics.
Since 2009, she has been a policy committee member for the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. She was also the head of the Center for Asia-Pacific Women in Politics and the president of the Korean Association of Women in Politics.