Song Hee-kyung Park Kyung-mee Shin Yong-hyeon



By Yi Whan-woo

Three political rookies who were formerly an engineer, a mathematician and a scientist, won seats in the National Assembly, Wednesday, under the proportional representation system.

Song Hee-kyung of the ruling Saenuri Party, Park Kyung-mee of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK) and Shin Yong-hyeon of the minor opposition People's Party were given the top slot in the proportional representative system amid alleged high public interest in science following the AlphaGo-versus-Lee Se-dol go matches.

Song was a cloud-computing expert. Park was a former professor of mathematics education at Hongik University while Shin was president of the government-run Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS).

The three female candidates were on the top of their respective party's list of candidates under the proportional representation system.

The higher candidates are ranked, the greater their election chances are under the system.

The parties' choices were seen as a campaign strategy to capitalize on the historic match-up between AlphaGo, a computer program developed by Google's DeepMind and Lee, a Korean go grandmaster. In March, MPK spokesman Kim Sung-soo said, "We've invited Park as we're aware of the fact that mathematics is the key to developing artificial intelligence programs".

The defeat of Lee by the deep-learning algorithm in a five-game matchup in March raised awareness for a need to nurture experts in AI-related fields, including engineering, mathematics and natural sciences.

Song, 51, was the vice president of the telecommunication giant KT's Internet of Things (IoT) business division. She topped the ruling party's 44-candidate lineup for proportional representatives.

She earned an MBA degree from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, one of the country's top engineering schools.

Park, 50, built fame in the educational field as an author of best-selling math textbooks, such as "Math Vitamin" and "Math Concert."

She earned a Ph.D. in mathematics education at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign.

Shin, 55, served for over 30 years at KRISS, which developed a government certification system used for cutting-edge technologies.

She earned a Ph.D. in physics at Chungnam National University.

The MPK and People's Party selected 34 and 18 proportional representation candidates, respectively.

A total of 47 proportional representatives were chosen for the 300-member National Assembly. They were selected in proportion to the overall number of votes that their respective parties collected through direct elections in 253 constituencies.