South Korea's first astronaut, Yi So-yeon, has urged young people, particularly girls confronting prejudice or perceived barriers, not to place limits on their ambitions.
"Don't limit your dreams or your abilities," Yi told Anadolu during the 77th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Türkiye's Mediterranean resort city of Antalya.
"If you do your best, you can achieve anything you want," she said.
Yi, who became the first South Korean to travel into space in 2008, said she had never imagined becoming an astronaut while growing up because her country had neither a space agency nor a human spaceflight program at the time.
"It never even occurred to me to think about becoming an astronaut," she said. "I hardly knew what the word 'astronaut' meant."
That changed while she was completing her doctorate, when the South Korean government launched a program to select the country's first astronaut.
"I thought, 'What if I conducted experiments in space instead of on the ground?' That would be amazing, because in space you are constantly floating and experiencing so many different things," she said.
With no previous astronaut in South Korean history, Yi said she became curious about how someone could qualify for the role.
"That pure curiosity led me to apply for the astronaut program," she said.
Yi did not expect to be chosen from nearly 36,000 applicants. After a selection process lasting around 10 months, however, she was selected for the mission.
She traveled aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station in April 2008, spending approximately 10 days in space and conducting scientific experiments.
