A South Korean climber today became the first woman to scale 14 of the world's highest mountains.

Oh Eun-sun reached the summit of Annapurna and planted a South Korean flag.

She beat a Spanish rival for the right to call herself the first woman to climb all 14 of the highest mountains in the Himalayas.

Annapurna, at 26,545ft above sea level, was the last of the 14 Himalayan peaks above the 8,000-metre level she had wanted to conquer.

She narrowly beat Edurne Pasaban of Spain to the 14th peak. Pasaban had only the 26,330ft Mount Shisha Pangma left on her list.

Oh also tried to reach the peak of Annapurna last year but turned away near the summit because of bad weather. Snow and wind also stopped her from making the trek last weekend.

"I gave it up because of a sudden ominous feeling that something bad would happen to either me or my peers including the sherpas on my way back to base camp," she said last month.

She said this trip would be different, and she would be carrying a photograph of Ko Mi-young, a lifelong rival who fell to her death last year while descending from Nanga Parbat, the world's ninth-highest peak in the Himalayas.