A female Army officer will be dispatched this week to a U.N. office handling its peacekeeping operations, becoming the first female South Korean officer to assume a role at the organization’s unit, the Defense Ministry said Monday.

Lieut. Col. Choi Kyung-hee, who had worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency in Seoul, will leave the country Tuesday to work as a capability development officer at the Policy and Doctrine Team of the Department of Peace Keeping Operations, based in New York, for the next two years.

Choi, who has served in various command posts in the Army, has been credited for her successful work as a senior officer during the Korean peacekeeping operations in East Timor from 2002-2003, and at a U.N. mission in Liberia from 2008-2009, the ministry said in a press release.

Currently, three Korean Army officers are working at the U.N. DPKO. There are 10 female Korean officers working as part of the U.N. peacekeeping forces across the globe, officials said.

“We will establish a global standing as an internationalized military that contributes to world peace through sending our excellent military staff to a variety of international organizations,” said the ministry.

(sshluck@heraldcorp.com)