Nguyen Ngoc Cam, aged 44, has become the first Vietnamese-Korean chosen by the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DP) to run in the 21st parliamentary elections scheduled for this April, the Vietnam News Agency reported. Cam, born in Long Thanh District in the southern Vietnamese province of Dong Nai, got married to a Korean engineer when she worked as a translator for a Vietnamese construction firm in 1996.

She left for South Korea in 1997 and was granted Korean citizenship one year later.

While managing a forum on Korean-Vietnamese multicultural families in 2004, she gave advice and helped many Vietnamese brides handle challenges such as language and cultural barriers when they began a new life in the country.

She then became an activist for the rights of immigrants in South Korea after studying Korean and getting a master’s degree in law at Konkuk University.

Cam proposed to local authorities rational policies for immigrants, as well as made efforts to build a multicultural society in which people respect each other, contributing to nurturing the Vietnam-South Korea relations, the Vietnam News Agency said. Three years ago, she was elected chairwoman of the Vietnamese People Association in South Korea, which has 200,000 members.

She is now a member of the Presidential Committee to Commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the Establishment of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, director of the Korea Support Centre for Foreigners, and managing director of the support center for migrant workers in Seoul.

Cam has received a multitude of certificates of merit from the South Korean President and Vietnamese State for her considerable contributions to the Vietnamese community in South Korea and the immigrant community there.

South Korea’s upcoming legislative elections will be on April 15.

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