Kim So-yeon

So-yeon Schröder-Kim (; born 3 June 1970) is a South Korean interpreter, translator, and the fifth wife of former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

Career Kim So-yeon was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1970. She moved to Marburg, Germany in 1995. She utilized her multilingual skills by working as a translator shortly after. She notably translated a series of books and essays about South Korean president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kim Dae-jung. In 2011, she was hired by NRW.INVEST, a state-owned economic development agency of North Rhine-Westphalia. She succeeded in helping more than eighty South Korean entrepreneurs branch out in the state. In 2023, she was dismissed for attending a Victory Day event in the Russian embassy in Berlin amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She was compensated in September of that year.

Personal life

So-yeon's first marriage was to a South Korean plastic surgeon, with whom she had a daughter. They divorced in 2017. She then married former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder in 2018. Gerhard had served as chancellor from 1998 to 2005 as a member of the SPD. They met in 2015. So-yeon translated Gerhard's autobiography into Korean. They live in Hannover and Seoul. Her first husband filed a lawsuit, alleging an affair.

She is fluent in German and Japanese, as well as her native Korean. She is a devout Christian.