OKCHEON, South Korea - Park Geun-hye was 22 years old when she washed the blood from her assassinated mother's dress. Five years later, she recalls in her autobiography, she held her father's blood-soaked shirt after the South Korean strongman was shot dead.

Now, both hampered and helped by the contrasting legacies of her murdered parents, the 60-year-old Park appears on the cusp of becoming South Korea's first women president.

Park was chosen as presidential candidate for the ruling conservatives last week and polls show she is the front-runner for a December election.

For some South Koreans, it is the memory of Park's father, Park Chung-hee, that comes to mind when they think of her. He was a military dictator whose 18-year rule dragged the country out of poverty but at the cost of human rights.

He is still a controversial figure in the now-prosperous Asian industrial power. Park's opponents will aim to tar her with his brush in the election race.

But it is recollections of her mother, Yuk Young-soo, once known as "the mother of the nation", that look set to help propel Park into the presidential Blue House.

Yuk is remembered for acts of charity that included a famous visit to a leper colony where she shook hands and embraced the sick. She remains South Korea's most popular first lady by far, polls show.

For many South Koreans, Park's frugal lifestyle as a single woman living in a modest home in the capital, Seoul, as well as her simple clothes and 1970s hairstyle bring her mother to mind.

"Park looks like her mother, when she greets people and smiles," said one supporter, Lee Young-ho, speaking in Yuk's home town of Okcheon.

Lee should know.

A former soldier and Vietnam War veteran, Lee was a member of the presidential guard in the 1970s and worked closely with the Park family.

"Park looks like her mother, when she greets people and smiles," Lee told Reuters, sitting under the curved roof of Yuk's old home where she lived until she married Park.

The traditional Korean house has become a shrine to Yuk with hundreds of people visiting every day.

Lee, now 68, is an official with Park's New Frontier Party and has also co-authored a biography of Yuk.

He is confident Park can maintain her double-digit lead in the polls and win an election victory which, he says, would somehow make up for the sacrifices.

"A kind of debt can be paid back when Park becomes president."

Yuk was 49 when, on August 15, 1974, she was killed by a stray bullet when a pro-North Korean assassin opened fire at her husband. Witnesses said the skies turning "reddish-purple" upon her death.

Memorial ceremonies are held on the anniversary at her grave in Seoul and in Okcheon, 170 km (100 miles) from the capital. Thousands of people attend.

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