Cheong Wa Dae Nurse Sheds No Light on Park's 'Missing 7 Hours'

A former Cheong Wa Dae nurse on Thursday failed to shed any light on the question of President Park Geun-hye's whereabouts on the morning of the worst disaster in Korea's modern history.

Cho Yeo-ok, an army nurse, told a National Assembly hearing that she was working at the Cheong Wa Dae clinic and not with the president when the ferry Sewol sank with over 300, mostly teenage passengers, on board in April 2014.

Park was nowhere to be found for seven hours on the day of the disaster while rescue efforts went badly awry. Suspicions abound that she was having some kind of cosmetic procedure and had been put under after catching on to a celebrity fad for the knockout sleeping drug Propofol.

"I did not engage in any treatment of the president as I was working in the clinic," Cho told lawmakers, going back on her claim in an earlier media interview that she had been "close to the president" on the fateful day.

But Cho rounded out an absurd picture of the presidential office at the time by admitting that she administered placenta injections not only to Park but to about a dozen Cheong Wa Dae staff on other occasions.

Evidence shows that the presidential office purchased hundreds of the quack anti-aging injections in recent years, and Cho said she never saw Park being given them by other nurses.

She said most of the shots, which are administered subcutaneously, were for the president. But she denied that the presidential office, which also stockpiled the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, had a supply of Propofol.

Asked if Park was suffering from sleeping disorders, as one of Park's private doctors has testified, Cho declined to comment citing confidentiality. Cho also denied rumors that military intelligence tried to prevent her from attending the hearing.

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