Choi Jung-wha, who carried Korea's image abroad, dies at 70

Choi Jung-wha, the first Korean to work as an international conference interpreter and a decades-long champion of the country's image abroad, died Sunday of breast cancer.

She was 70.

She built her career on the conviction that Korea could be explained to the world — and did much of the explaining herself.

She interpreted for a succession of South Korean presidents, oversaw more than 1,800 international conferences, and in 2003 founded the Corea Image Communication Institute to shape how the cou ...