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616153_121220_SKorea4.jpg

Asia’s Power Clans

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From Japan to Bhutan, North Korea to Bangladesh, Asian politicians have been keeping it in the family. On Dec. 19, Park Geun-Hye was elected South Korea's first female president. She is the daughter of former South Korean dictator Park Chung-Hee. In this March 2008 photo, Park burns incense for her father. 

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On Dec. 16, Japan chose as prime minister the right-wing Shinzo Abe, the son of a Japanese foreign minister and the grandson of Nobusuke Kishi, who as a cabinet member in 1941 signed the declaration of war against the United States, and who served as prime minister almost two decades later. This family photo shows Shinzo Abe (front row, third from right) sitting on the lap of his grandfather, along with his father, Shintaro Abe (front row, right), his mother, and his elder brother.

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In this photo, taken in Pyongyang on April 15, 2012, North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong Un waves at the end of a major military parade marking 100 years since the birth of the country's founder and his grandfather, Kim Il Sung (pictured in the giant photo on the left). Pictured on the right is Kim Jong Un's late father and former supreme leader, Kim Jong Il.

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A woman in Bangkok, Thailand wears a T-shirt displaying pictures of now-exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra (right) and his sister, current Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra (left). Their father was a member of parliament. 

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In Bangladesh, current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina (right) is the daughter of the country's first president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Her longtime rival, former Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia (left), is the widow of a former president.

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Current Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari (pictured on the billboard on the left) was married to the assassinated Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (center), who is herself the eldest daughter of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (right). In this picture, taken in Benazir Bhutto's native town of Naudero, a milk seller passes by an image of the trio.

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In this 1964 photo, Indira Gandhi pays her respects to her father Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister. Gandhi herself assumed the office two years later.

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This picture, taken March 21, 1977 in New Delhi, shows Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi with her two sons Rajiv (left) and Sanjay. Sanjay Gandhi, who was regarded as the likely successor to his mother, died in a plane crash in 1980, and so it was Rajiv who took over as prime minister when Indira was killed four years later by her bodyguards.

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Pro-democracy activists in Myanmar carry portraits of Nobel laureate and politician Aung San Suu Kyi and her father Aung San ("Burma's George Washington") as they shout slogans during a demonstration near the Indian Parliament in New Delhi on Aug. 23, 2007.

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In Malaysia, Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak (center left) is the son of the country's second prime minister (third banner from left) and the nephew of its third (fourth banner from left).

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In this 2008 photo, Bhutan's fourth Dragon King (son of the third) crowns his son, His Majesty Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, fifth Dragon King.  


 

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