South Korean astronaut Yi So-yeon, left, and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Volkov, second from left, and Oleg Kononenko pose for a snapshot during a news conference in Star City outside Moscow, Wednesday. Yi will serve as a payload specialist with two Russian cosmonauts for a seven or eight day mission to the International Space Station. / Reuters-Yonhap


By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter

Preparations are almost over and Yi So-yeon is ready for her trip to the International Space Station to become the first Korean in space on April 8.

Twenty days before the historic trip, Yi and backup Ko San are having six days of vacation at an unidentified location near Moscow, after concluding their training sessions at the Russian space training center Wednesday. They will move to the quarantined Cosmonaut Hotel in Baikonur, Kazakhstan next Wednesday, where the Soyuz rocket will be awaiting the crew at a nearby launch pad.

``There will be some duties for the astronauts in Kazakhstan, but it will be mainly resting because they need to be fit for the launch,'' Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) public relations official Lee Myung-ho said.

Rest is what the couple will need most as the past two weeks have worn Yi and Ko out after their roles were abruptly exchanged by Russian space authorities on March 6. Ko had been the main candidate for months, but was stripped of his duties for ``repeatedly violating regulations'' and was forced to give the role to Yi.

KARI said Ko will keep the backup astronaut's position and will be able to replace Yi if anything happens to the 29-year-old female scientist.

``Ko and Yi will go to Kazakhstan together. If Yi cannot make the trip, Russian officials can replace her with Ko,'' the KARI spokesman said. The media will be allowed to meet them only on April 7, the day before the launch.

Conspiracy theorists have argued that Ko was a spy for the Korean government, given that he has shown a solid and disciplined personality, hence unlikely to disobey rules twice on his own volition. Ko was an artificial intelligence researcher at a Samsung lab, and also a bronze medal winner in a national amateur boxing tournament and a member of a university mountain climbing team.

Both KARI and the Russian trainers refuted such claims. They said Ko took a space manual out of the high-security base to Korea and read documents he was not authorized to see, but the misbehavior was the result of his overheated passion for the space flight. Lee said the incident won't affect Ko's employment at the institute.

The swap between Ko and Yi may benefit the trip's sponsors, such as SBS TV, in an unexpected way. The government is using the 25-billion won astronaut project not only as a scientific mission but also as a promotion event, so it can win public approval for more expensive space projects, such as building rockets and launching a lunar probe by 2020. While Yi has a jovial character fit for a space ambassador, Ko was seen as a more reserved figure, trying to keep himself away from the publicity.

``I promised to myself that I'd never appear on TV shows so I can spend more time participating in educational events for children,'' Ko told The Korea Times in January before he was taken off the list.

Yi said she would share her ``Korean space food'' such as kimchi and rice if asked to. She also said that she hopes her parents don't worry about her safety.

The ISS station travels at 27,700 kilometers per hour, orbiting the earth every 90 minutes.

indizio@koreatimes.co.kr