(dpa) - South Korea on Monday changed its first citizen to be sent into space, replacing the man it had originally selected with a woman less than a month before takeoff on a Russian request.
Nanotechnology engineer Yi So Yeon, 29, is to now fly in a Russian Soyuz capsule to the International Space Station in early April after Russian space officials asked for the original South Korean candidate, Ko San, be replaced after he violated training regulations, South Korea's Education, Science and Technology Ministry said.
Ko mistakenly mailed a training handbook with his personal belongings back home in September, a ministry official said, adding that the book was later returned.
Last month, he also obtained a pilot manual that he was not authorized to read, said Lee Sang Mok, head of the ministry's space technology bureau.
"Ko was aware of the rules and signed an agreement not to break them on entering the programme," Lee said.
Both Yi and Ko have been undergoing the same preparations for next month's mission at a cosmonaut-training centre outside Moscow, so no problems were expected because of the personnel change, the ministry said.
It added that the Russian side sought the personnel change, saying even minor mistakes or infractions could have serious repercussions in space.
Ko, 31, a computer engineer, was selected over Yi in September to go on the mission. The two were chosen as the finalists from among more than 36,000 applicants vying to become the first South Korean in space.
Yi was scheduled to team up with two Russian cosmonauts for a Soyuz mission that is to launch April 8 from Baikonur in Kazakstan.
She is to spend seven to eight days at the space station, conducting scientific experiments.
She and Ko both work for the Korean Aerospace Research Institute.
South Korea's government is investing more than 20 million dollars in Ko and Yi's training to improve its national scientific competitiveness and enter the hierarchy of the world's space powers. The country has a satellite launch centre on the island of Oenaro off its southern coast.