“My son will become a full-fledged Korean citizen only after he serves the military. Of course, I will cry when I have to send him off but I am proud of being a Korean mom.”
“Within ten years from now, I expect there will be many more children from international marriage. I took the job of a congresswoman to make our society better for all families regardless of their background and nationality.”
—Jasmine B. Lee, Philippine-born Korean congresswoman (New Frontier Party)
Jasmine Lee (born Jasmine Bacurnay y Villanueva; January 6, 1977) is a Philippine-born South Korean television personality, actress and civil servant. Elected as a proportional representative in South Korea’s National Assembly in 2012, she is the first non-ethnic Korean and naturalized Korean to become a lawmaker.
SEOUL, Dec 15 (Korea Bizwire) – Jasmine B. Lee, a Philippine-born Korean congresswoman, held an interview with Japan’s Kyodo News on December 12 and talked about her elder son Seung-geun who is waiting to be drafted for military service. Ms. Lee is the first naturalized Korean to become a lawmaker under the proportional representative scheme for the ruling party in 2012. Since becoming a legislator, she has been actively involved in issues such as rights of women, children and foreign citizens.
She gained her Korean citizenship in 1998 by learning the Korean language alone. Since 2005 when she had time away from childrearing, she has engaged in grassroots level activities to help out foreign women residing in Korea through marriage. She has a son and a daughter and lost her husband in 2010 in a family vacation in Gangwon Province when the husband was drowned in a mountain stream.
She said in the interview that the moment she decided to stay and survive in Korea was when she appeared in a movie “Punch” in 2011 that drew more than 5 million viewers playing the role of the Filipino mother of the young main character.
The ruling New Frontier Party offered in 2012 her a position as a proportional representative for which she took. She has been known as a lawmaker who proposes a variety of bills in support of foreign women and children living in Korea while encouraging understanding of foreign cultures. The cafés within the head office of POSCO and located in downtown Seoul where several migrant family members work were also the outcome of Jasmine Lee’s legislative activities.
By M.H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
