Baikonur (AP): South Korea's first astronaut and two cosmonauts made final preparations on Tuesday to fly aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the international space station.

Yi So-yeon, a 29-year-old bioengineer, flashed a thumbs-up sign and told cheering Russian and Korean well-wishers, including her family, that she felt great as she was escorted from the Cosmonaut Hotel to a bus that drove her and her crew mates to the Baikonur launch facility.

``I am proud of my daughter,'' said her mother, Jung Kum-suk. ``Before I was very worried, but I saw that she was smiling today and her mood was good.''

The Soyuz is scheduled for an evening launch with Yi, commander Sergei Volkov and flight engineer Oleg Kononenko on board. It will be the first space flight for all including Volkov, the 34-year-old son of a decorated Soviet-era cosmonaut.

His father, Alexander Volkov, told reporters that he had mixed feelings as he said farewell to his son.

``It's hard for me because I know what is ahead for them and I know how hard it is,'' he said.

Yi is on track to become the first Korean to reach space, and has expressed hope that her historic journey will encourage the reunification of the divided Korean peninsula.

The South Korean government has a US$20 million (euro12.7 million) deal with Russia to co-sponsor the flight in exchange for Yi's trip. She was among 36,000 applicants for the job in a 2006 nationwide competition, and plans to conduct 18 scientific experiments during her nine days on the space station.

She was originally chosen as a backup to Ko San, an expert in artificial intelligence. But Ko was replaced by Yi in March after Russian officials accused him of the unauthorized removal of technical manuals from the Star City cosmonaut training center near Moscow. Ko apologized and shrugged off his disappointment at losing his seat on the flight. His employer, the state-run Korea Aerospace Research Institute, has rebuked him.

The drama behind Ko's replacement by Yi has drawn intense attention from the South Korean and Russian media. About 50 journalists from the Korean SBS network are in Baikonur to cover the flight.

In the South Korean capital, Seoul, thousands were expected to gather in front of City Hall to watch a live telecast of the launch. President Lee Myung-bak told a Cabinet meeting that he hoped the event would boost interest in space business and research.

``Today is a very meaningful day in sending Korea's first citizen into space,'' he said.

The lengthy launch preparations are steeped in traditions that have evolved since Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel to space in 1961. Space travelers always stay in the guarded Cosmonaut Hotel in the city of Baikonur and travel to the cosmodrome in a bus with a blue stripe followed by a backup van with a yellow stripe. On Monday night, the crew watched ``White Sun of the Desert,'' the classic Soviet film set in the early 1920s with no obvious connection to space travel.

Before they left their rooms Tuesday, they were expected to sign their names on their doors, observe a minute of silence together and toast one another with champagne. After returning to Earth, every cosmonaut since Gagarin has planted a tree on the banks of the Syr Darya River, a short walk from the hotel.

Baikonur, a former missile development center, was built in the middle of Central Asia's steppes, a vast scrubland that stretches roughly from the Caspian Sea to western China. Camels graze along highways, and animals that resemble prairie dogs stand sentry on railroad tracks, looking over the landscape, which appears as flat and featureless as the sea. Stray dogs and cats filter among some of the buildings.

Yi, who received her doctorate degree in February, has pledged to cook a Korean meal for the crew members at the space station, and promised to sing a song for her Soyuz crew mates on Wednesday _ Cosmonauts' Day.

The two Volkovs have said little publicly about the distinction of being the first father-son space traveler team. Sergei Volkov has said that if his own son wanted to become a cosmonaut he would have serious discussions with him about such an important decision.

The elder Volkov logged 391 days in space on three separate missions in the 1980s and early 1990s. On his last journey, he left Earth as a Soviet citizen and returned as a citizen of the new Russian Federation, following the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Volkov and Kononenko are both scheduled to spend six months as part of the orbiting station's crew. American astronaut Garrett Reisman, who arrived last month on the U.S. space shuttle Endeavor, is currently on board the station.

Yi is to return to Earth on April 19 along with two of the station's current occupants, American astronaut Peggy Whitson and flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko.