PNoy to honor Pinay assembly member in South Korea

President Benigno Aquino III is set to honor a Filipina TV host and actress who became the first naturalized Korean citizen to win a seat in the National Assembly when he visits South Korea later this week.

"The President will confer the Order of Lakadunla on Representative Jasmine Bacurnay-Lee of the National Assembly," Foreign Affairs spokesperson Raul Hernandez announced during a press briefing at Malacañang.

He said Aquino will confer the award when he meets with the Filipino community in South Korea as part of his state visit there later this week.

Hernandez said the award is "in recognition of (Lee's) achievement as well as her advocacies in promoting migrant women's rights and multiculturalism."

According to the Commission on Filipinos Overseas, Lee is "an advocate for multicultural families and the Filipino community in South Korea."

It said she met her husband Lee Dong-ho when she was still a college student at the Ateneo de Davao. She then moved to Seoul in 1995 and became a naturalized Korean citizen three years later.

Lee's husband, however, died in 2010 while trying to save their daughter from drowning. — Kimberly Jane Tan/KBK, GMA News