Two South Korean Prospective Astronauts Undergoing Medical Examination

MOSCOW. Jan 15 (Interfax-AVN) – A thorough medical examination of two South Korean citizens who are volunteers for a space mission began at Zvezdny Gorodok in Moscow region on Monday, Mark Belakovsky of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medical and Biological Problems told Interfax-AVN on Monday.

“The medical examination will last slightly more than a week. A medical commission involving representatives of the institute and the Cosmonaut Training Center will convene on January 24 and decide whether the candidates may start training at Zvezdny Gorodok,” he said.

If the answer is affirmative, the training will start in early February, he said.

Two volunteers have been selected from several thousand South Korean citizens who want to fly to the International Space Station (ISS) onboard Russia’s Soyuz spaceship. The first South Korean astronaut will go on a space mission in the spring of 2008 under an agreement between the Russian Federal Space Agency and the Korea Space Research Institute.

The Science and Technology Ministry said they had chosen Go San, a male researcher from the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, and Yi So-yeon, a female post-graduate student of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.

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