▲ This undated file photo shows the presidential office in Seoul. (Yonhap)

presidential office-probe

Presidential office launches probe into protocol secretary over child's alleged bullying

By Lee Haye-ah

SEOUL, Oct. 20 (Yonhap) -- The presidential office said Friday it has launched an investigation into allegations that the protocol secretary's daughter bullied a schoolmate, leaving injuries that would take nine weeks to heal.

Kim Seung-hee, the presidential secretary for protocol, has been removed from President Yoon Suk Yeol's upcoming state visits to Saudi Arabia and Qatar pending the investigation, according to presidential spokesperson Lee Do-woon.

"The presidential office immediately opened an investigation of civil service discipline with regard to the secretary in question and removed him from the team accompanying the president to Saudi Arabia and Qatar tomorrow," Lee said during a press briefing.

Earlier in the day, Rep. Kim Young-ho of the main opposition Democratic Party claimed during a parliamentary audit session that the secretary's third-grade daughter was suspected of bullying a second-grader at their elementary school in Gyeonggi Province, causing injuries that would take nine weeks to heal.

The lawmaker also claimed that on July 19, Kim Seung-hee's wife changed her profile photo on mobile messenger app KakaoTalk to a photo of her husband with the president, the same day their daughter was suspended from school over the alleged bullying, an action he described as amounting to a display of power and "very inappropriate."

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