Seoul: It was just what President Park Geun-hye of South Korea didn't need: blue jokes about blue pills in the Blue House.
Revelations that the president's office had bought hundreds of doses of Viagra and equivalent drugs have touched off a frenzy of wisecracks, speculation and lurid rumours in South Korea.
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Thousands call for South Korean president to quit
Tens of thousands of South Koreans are protesting in the capital, calling on embattled President Park Geun-hye to resign over a growing influence-peddling scandal.
Ms Park already had a major corruption scandal on her hands, with mounting calls for her to step down over the actions of a long-time friend. Now, she has to explain why her staff stocked up on drugs commonly prescribed for erectile dysfunction.
Kim Sang-hee, an opposition lawmaker, raised the issue on Wednesday by citing medical insurance data showing that the Blue House, as the president's office is known, had bought 60 Viagra pills and 304 pills of the generic equivalent, sildenafil citrate, in December.
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A presidential spokesman, Jung Youn-kuk, insisted that there was a perfectly innocent explanation. Besides the more common bedroom use, the pills are sometimes taken to prevent or treat altitude sickness. Mr Jung said doctors had prescribed them for presidential aides to have handy for that purpose during Ms Park's official visit in May to Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. (Those countries' capitals are all well above sea level.) As it happened, Mr Jung said, none of the pills were used on the trip.
Ms Park has never married, and her private life has been the subject of scrutiny for years. After the ferry Sewol sank in 2014, killing more than 300 people, rumours spread that she had been in a tryst with a boyfriend for seven hours, making her government slow to respond effectively to the disaster. Her office vehemently denied the rumour, and a Japanese journalist who reported it was indicted on defamation charges. (He was later acquitted.)
Other items on the Blue House's pharmacy tab also drew unwelcome attention on Wednesday, including large volumes of nutritional compounds that wealthy South Korean women have often injected to fight fatigue, aging and skin problems. The presidential office said those items were for staff members, but that did not stop online commentators from accusing Ms Park of squandering tax money on skin care.
None of this was much help to Ms Park, who has been struggling with the corruption scandal for weeks. It centres on a woman named Choi Soon-sil, a close friend of Ms Park for decades, who has been arrested on charges of leveraging her influence to extort millions of dollars from businesses.
On Sunday, prosecutors said Park was an accomplice in the alleged extortion, and two former presidential aides have also been indicted on charges of aiding Ms Choi and providing her with confidential government documents.
Frustrated by Ms Park's refusal to step down, opposition lawmakers are trying to impeach her.
New York Times
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