As Park Geun-hye becomes South Korea’s first female leader, she joins a string of powerful female Asian politicians who have kept it in the family, following their fathers or husbands or preceding their sons into the realm of public service. 

“Park Geun-hye’s rise closely follows a pattern in male-dominated Asia of the daughters and husbands of national figureheads becoming powerful through association,” GlobalPost’s East Asia correspondent Geoffrey Cain points out.

“What’s interesting is that all their fathers and brothers were once considered national heroes but later assassinated or exiled somehow.”

See the rest: All in the family: What many Asian female leaders share

SEOUL, South Korea — Park Geun-hye, the daughter of the South Korean autocrat who ruled the country for much of the 1960s and ’70s, became the country’s first female president on Tuesday, according to exit polls.

Park narrowly beat her liberal opponent in one of the closest and most divisive elections in recent years.

Read more: Park Geun-hye will be South Korea’s first female president

Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister and an important coalition partner of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been charged with breach of trust.

The Justice Ministry said on Thursday that Lieberman will be indicted for fraud and breach of trust, according to Reuters. 

GlobalPost’s Tarnopolsky said that Lieberman’s reaction to the charges is likely to impact the January elections.

“If Lieberman resigns, Netanyahu will be left with the residual stump of a party now irrevocably attached to his Likud, four weeks before elections. That could be awkward. If he doesn’t resign, I predict the opposition parties will turn this into the only issue, and it could hijack this election. In which direction is anybody’s guess,” she said.

Read more: Avigdor Lieberman, Netanyahu coalition partner, charged with breach of trust

Ailing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez tapped Vice President Nicolas Maduro as his successor on Saturday night, calling on Venezuelans to elect Maduro to take over duties if Chavez himself is unable to stay in office due to his battle with cancer.

The man the Associated Press described as “intensely loyal” has served as Venezuela’s foreign minister since 2006 and was chosen for the vice presidential post three days after Chavez won re-election on Oct. 7 of this year.

Who is Nicolas Maduro? Read more at GlobalPost

Fernando Lugo, the president of Paraguay, has a love child.

Wait … make that another love child.

A 10-year-old boy named Angel Zarate is the son of Narcisa de la Cruz de Zarate, a nurse, who claims that Lugo was the daddy, French news wire AFP reports. The president’s lawyer says Lugo accepts responsibility.

It’s no biggie though because their questionable affair did not happen while Lugo was president, but sometime before. Around the time when he was a Roman Catholic bishop.

De la Cruz is the fourth woman in Paraguay to claim the president is the father of her child.

In 2009, Lugo admitted to fathering a boy named Guillermo Armindo after the child’s mother accused Lugo of “irresponsible paternity,” according to the Associated Press.

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