Luxury for pets? Shallow pool at South Korean presidential residence raises questions
The pool is estimated to be 5m long and 2m wide, with a shallow end about 50cm deep. PHOTO: PARK HONG-KEUN/FACEBOOK
A liberal lawmaker's revelation of a shallow pool inside the presidential residence in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, has raised speculation that disgraced former President Yoon Suk Yeol may have constructed a swimming pool for the first couple's pets when he moved in.
This aligns with ongoing suspicion by the liberal Democratic Party of Korea, which became the country's ruling party with President Lee Jae-myung's election win, about the excessive water use inside the official residence.
Representative Kim Byoung-joo said in the party's supreme council meeting June 9 that the speculation that the pool was used for pets, not humans, is gaining ground.
'I've looked around the space inside the official residence of the president, and a pool grabbed my attention,' said Mr Kim, who was one of the ruling party lawmakers invited to visit the official residence on June 7.
'We should closely examine whether the Yoons installed facilities for personal use with taxpayers' money after moving into the official residence, where no one can monitor how the money is being spent,' the two-term lawmaker Mr Kim also said, adding that Yoon and his wife are suspected of having installed a cat tower worth 5 million won (S$4,750).
Before President Lee and his wife, Kim Hye-kyung, took over the space as their official residence, Yoon and his wife, Kim Keon Hee, were the first South Korean presidential couple to have chosen to use a building in the Seoul neighborhood of Hannam-dong, Yongsan-gu, formerly a residence for the foreign minister, as the presidential residence.
The Yoon couple kept six dogs and five cats there until a week after Yoon was removed from office by the Constitutional Court in April amid the political crisis caused by his attempted self-coup.
The pool — estimated to be 5m long and 2m wide, with a shallow end about 50cm deep — recently grabbed media attention as four-term Democratic Party lawmaker Rep Park Hong-keun revealed a photo of it inside the residence.
Citing water bills it had obtained, local newspaper Hankyoreh revealed in late May that water usage at the residence began to skyrocket from the summer of 2023, rising from 972 tonnes during the April-May period to 1,741 tonnes during the June-July period. Water consumption peaked at 1860 tonnes during the August-September period in 2024.
According to Rep Kim Young-hwan of the Democratic Party, the Yoon couple's water use amounted to 206 tonnes in the week between Yoon's removal from office and his departure from the home.
A representative of former president Yoon was quoted by Yonhap on June 9 as saying that the speculation is not true and that the pool was built as part of landscaping done a few months before United Arab Emirates President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan visited Seoul in October 2023. THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK
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