Park Was Lonely, Says Court Quack's Wife

Ex-President Park Geun-hye was lonely at the heart of her vaudeville court at Cheong Wa Dae, the wife of her quack doctor told a court Tuesday.

The wife of cosmetic surgeon Kim Young-jae, who is on trial for perjury after denying he administered quack anti-aging treatments to Park, testified in the Seoul Central District Court that she visited Park 14 times at Cheong Wa Dae for long chats.

Park Chae-yoon said the president "was very lonely and wanted to hear about what was going on in the outside world."

"I even spoke with her one-on-one in her bedroom and we cried when she talked about her late parents," Park Chae-yoon said. "She told me she had digestive problems after losing both of her parents. I felt sorry for her."

When prosecutors asked her if the two discussed business projects, the witness said, "She did help me, but I never asked her directly for support."

Her husband lied to a National Assembly inquiry that he never administered medical treatments to Park once she became president, but witnesses testified that he was forever flitting in and out of the president’s office.

But his wife denied that he administered some kind of cosmetic treatment to Park in the notorious "missing seven hours," when the president was nowhere to be found during the April 2014 ferry disaster.

"He didn't treat her that day," Park Chae-yoon said, "but we were afraid that if he admitted treating her at all, we would be blamed for everything."

She added, "After prosecutors launched an investigation" into the president's still unexplained whereabouts, "we were told that the least we could do for the president was not to discuss her cosmetic procedures in order to protect her privacy as a woman."

She said presidential administrative assistant Lee Young-sun called her and told her to keep her mouth shut. "I desperately urged my husband to lie for fear that our children would be harassed at school and it would become impossible to go about our normal lives," Park told the court. "My husband had to lie for our children."

Asked whether Kim also provided free injections to ex-Cheong Wa Dae secretary An Chong-bum and his wife, Park said, "We offered cosmetic procedures to some key figures we were grateful to and did not know it could be considered as a bribe."

Witnesses have testified that at one point half the presidential office had themselves injected with sheep embryo cells on a regular basis.

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