SEOUL – At the start of President Park Geun Hye’s term, physician Kim Sang Man was a frequent guest at Seoul’s Blue House, exempt from thorough security checks, giving injections derived from human placenta to South Korea’s most important patient.

Park’s frequent medical and cosmetic treatments, including shots administered without the supervision of her official doctors, have been revealed in detail during investigations into a sweeping corruption scandal that is poised to cost her the presidency, raising questions over their safety and efficacy.

It has also fuelled criticism that doctors not appointed by the presidential office treated her over an extended period and continued to do so even after medical staff at her official Blue House residence became aware.

“We’re talking about the president, not just anybody, so the official doctor has to be consulted and then make the decision,”said Shin Hyun Dai, who served as a Blue House doctor for former President Roh Moo Hyun from 2003 to 2008.

“The official doctor needs to know even about pills given for indigestion. This is nonsense,” said Shin, who practices Oriental medicine.

Kim said Park, who is 64 and has never married, suffered from insomnia and often became fatigued. He said he had gone into the Blue House to see Park a few times before being named a”consulting Blue House doctor” in August 2013, and several times after that.

He said he would visit Park’s residential quarters after his shift at a clinic, when the president’s medical staff were off duty.

“I would get a call that she is not well, and I would go in,” Kim told a parliamentary hearing this week.

Kim would said he would give Park placenta extract injections, which are administered subcutaneously, or just under the outer layer of skin.

“Usually doctors treat illnesses but my speciality is I try to manage the condition before an illness,” he said.

More common in East Asia than in the West, placental extract treatments have recently become popular in South Korea, but many doctors remain sceptical.

Huh Kap Bum, an endocrinologist who was former President Kim Dae Jung’s official doctor from 1998 to 2002, said it would have been less controversial if Park had chosen to consult her official doctors for the same treatment.

But, he added: “I would have said to the president, no, because they are not proven safe.”

MYSTERY PATIENT

Park’s medical treatments had been shrouded in secrecy.

Kim had been a staff physician at Chaum, a clinic known for its detox and beauty care services, where Park was treated under a pseudonym before she was elected in December 2012, according to the clinic’s president.

The Health Ministry has said prescriptions for an intravenous glucose and vitamin mix were issued for Park from 2012 to 2014, but that a Chaum doctor had fabricated records to show them as written for Park’s friend Choi Soon Sil.

Choi has been indicted and is at the centre of the influence-peddling scandal that led to Park’s impeachment last week in parliament, which must be confirmed or overturned by the Constitutional Court.

Last year, the Blue House bought 200 units of placenta extract and other products normally used for aesthetic purposes, according to a government database obtained and released by an opposition lawmaker in November.

The same record made headlines last month when it showed the purchase of 60 Viagra pills that the presidential office said were intended to ease altitude sickness for staff members during a trip to Africa earlier this year, but were never used.

Doctors and lawmakers have also said they suspect Park underwent procedures to reduce facial wrinkles, but none of the doctors known to have treated her have confirmed performing them.

Huh, the ex-Blue House doctor, said it was “abnormal” that there was not a better accounting of Park’s treatments.

“It appears that the Blue House medical system didn’t function normally. It is something that should not happen.”

FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH?

Human placental extract therapy has been around for half a century in Japan, where the government approves its use in liver treatments and to ease symptoms of the menopause.

News reports about Park’s enthusiasm for the injections has renewed public interest in the therapy, which can cost up to 100,000 won (US$84.50) per visit, meaning the mark-up from a product supplied to clinics at about 5,500 won makes it a lucrative business.

Scientific evidence of the benefits of placental extract is thin.

A South Korean study in 2008 said women who received placenta extracts showed improvement in menopausal symptoms linked to reduced oestrogen levels.

A few other studies, including a 1998 paper by a team of University of Tokyo scientists and another in 2013 by South Korean doctors, found evidence human placental extract may stimulate liver regeneration in rats, but there have been insufficient clinical trials to substantiate the benefits to humans.

“Medically, the proven effect of placenta injections remains fairly weak, but doctors are free to prescribe them,” said Shin Hyun Young, professor of family medicine at Myongji Hospital and former spokeswoman of the Korean Medical Association.

Protein, amino acids and vitamins and other compounds found in the substance are purported to alleviate fatigue and fight inflammation.

“I don’t recommend it because there is some debate about it,” Lee Byung Seok, an obstetrics and gynaecology specialist who was Park’s official doctor while Kim provided placenta shots, told the parliamentary hearing.

BEIJING – China expressed dissatisfaction on Friday after exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama met Indian President Pranab Mukherjee, saying it hoped India would recognise the Nobel Peace Prize winning monk as a separatist in religious guise.

Mukherjee hosted the Dalai Lama and other Nobel Peace laureates at a conference on children’s rights at the presidential palace on Sunday.

Those who attended, and spoke, included Princess Charlene of Monaco and the former president of East Timor, Jose Ramos-Horta.

The Indian government had ignored China’s “strong opposition and insisted” on arranging for the Dalai Lama to share the stage with Mukherjee, and meet him, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a daily news briefing in the Chinese capital. “China is strongly dissatisfied and resolutely opposed to this,” he said, adding that the Dalai Lama used the guise of religion to engage in separatist activities and China opposed any form of official contacts with him.

China wanted India to recognise the “anti-China, separatist essence of the Dalai Lama clique and take steps to banish the negative impact of this incident” to avoid disrupting ties between the Asian giants, Geng said.

While the Dalai Lama has had private meetings with Indian leaders, Sunday’s conference was the first public event, said the political head of the Tibetan government in exile based in India’s northern hill town of Dharamsala. “There are many European governments shying away from hosting His Holiness,” he told Reuters. “Here you have the president of India hosting His Holiness. I think is a powerful message to the world, and particularly to Beijing.” China regards the Dalai Lama as a separatist, though he says he merely seeks genuine autonomy for his Himalayan homeland Tibet, which Communist Chinese troops “peacefully liberated” in 1950.

The Dalai Lama fled into exile in India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

China also expressed displeasure with India this month over the visit to a sensitive border region of another senior Tibetan religious figure, the Karmapa Lama, Tibetan Buddhism’s third-most-senior monk, who fled into exile in India in 2000.

India is home to a large exiled Tibetan community.

BEIJING – Environmental authorities in China have advised 23 northern cities to issue red alerts, the highest possible air pollution warning, on Friday (Dec 17) evening, against the “worst” smog the country has experienced since autumn, state media said.

China issued its first ever red alert for smog in Beijing, the capital, last December, after adopting a colour-graded warning system in a crackdown on environmental degradation left by decades of breakneck economic growth.

Officials in Beijing issued a red alert on Thursday after the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) warned of a smog build-up across China’s north, saying the alert was expected to run until Dec 21.

The ministry has also advised 22 more cities reeling under pollution to issue the red alert warning, the official China Daily said on Friday.

Nine cities, including Jinan in the province of Shangdong were advised to issue the lower-status orange alert, Liu Bingjing, the ministry’s head of air quality management, told the paper.

The notification will be the third joint warning by city governments this month, Liu added.

Regular episodes of smog blanketing northern China this year stem from a combination of local emissions, unfavourable weather and pollutants wafted in from elsewhere, Bai Qiuyong, head of China’s Environmental Monitoring Center, told the paper.

Environmental authorities in Hebei province, which borders capital city Beijing, asked for a level one emergency response from major cities in the region to begin from Friday, according to a post on its official Weibo account late on Thursday.

The order requires the large number of heavy polluting industries in these cities, including in Tangshan, China’s steel capital, to cut back or halt production until Wednesday.

Red alerts are issued in Beijing when the air quality index, a measure of pollutants, is forecast to break 200 for more than four days in succession, surpass 300 for more than two days or overshoot 500 for at least 24 hours.

Read Also: Smog incentives hard to introduce in China

At each level, the colour-graded warning system prescribes advisories for schools, hospitals and businesses, as well as possible curbs on traffic and construction.

Thresholds for the issue of alerts vary among cities, as do the cautionary measures urged on local residents and businesses at each stage.

Residents of smaller cities near Beijing have previously complained that local government bodies failed to issue warnings when pollution was just as severe as in the capital.

BEIJING – China’s military has carried out its first ever live-fire drills using an aircraft carrier and fighters in the northeastern Bohai Sea close to Korea, state media said.

China’s growing military presence in the disputed South China Sea has fuelled concern, with the United States criticising its militarisation of maritime outposts and holding regular air and naval patrols to ensure freedom of navigation.

Ten vessels and 10 aircraft engaged in air-to-air, air-to-sea and sea-to-air combat drills that featured guided missiles, state broadcaster Chinese Central Television reported late on Thursday (Dec 15).

“This is the first time an aircraft carrier squadron has performed drills with live ammunition and real troops,” it said.

China’s Soviet-built Liaoning aircraft carrier and a formation of warships carried out aerial interception, anti-aircraft and anti-missile drills, in which Shenyang J-15 fighter jets carrying live missiles also participated, CCTV said.

On Wednesday, a US think tank said China had been installing anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems on artificial islands in the South China Sea, prompting China to defend its right to install military hardware there.

No other country has claims in the Bohai Sea, a busy north-eastern Chinese waterway and the site of Thursday’s drills.

The drills aimed to test the equipment and troop training levels, an unidentified navy official told the official China News Service.

This article was first published on Dec 16, 2016.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.