Woman to be first S. Korean in space

SEOUL, March 11 (UPI) -- A woman has been chosen to be the first South Korean in space after a male astronaut was dismissed for security violations.

Ko San was replaced by Russian space authorities for taking sensitive training materials outside the Russian space center, The Korea Times reported Monday.

Ko was replaced by Yi So-yeon, a 29-year-old mechanical engineer. She will fly on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station as a payload specialist with two Russian cosmonauts for a seven- or eight-day mission. The spacecraft is scheduled to launch April 8.

The head of the Korea Aerospace Research Institute said Yi has trained side-by-side with Ko for a year.