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By Kim Bo-eun
Questions are growing over allegations that President Park Geun-hye was prescribed medicine in the name of her scandal-ridden confidant Choi Soon-sil.
Prosecutors will have to find out why the President had the proxy prescriptions and why she sought medical attention from a doctor at a private medical institution although she had doctors and medical staff at Cheong Wa Dae.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare found Tuesday that Park received prescriptions from the anti-aging clinic Chaum, affiliated with the Cha Medical Group, which was frequented by Choi and her family members since 2010.
Inspections thus far show fatigue-relieving vitamin shots were prescribed for Park under the name of Choi and her older sister Choi Soon-deuk from 2012 to 2014.
Records show Choi and her sister used terms such as "Cheong" 19 times to refer to Park when filling in the recipient of the prescriptions. The clinic also used "Gil Ra-im," the name of a female character in the popular 2011 TV series "Secret Garden," to refer to Park.
Such proxy prescriptions are illegal under the Medical Law.
The Choi sisters obtained the proxy prescriptions for Park before she became President and continued to do so afterward. After Park took office, a former doctor at Chaum in charge of the prescriptions took the medication to Cheong Wa Dae and injected the shots there. The doctor, Kim Sang-man, was appointed as one of the President's medical advisors in 2013.
In addition, a nurse of Cheong Wa Dae's medical team allegedly handed over Park's blood samples for tests at the clinic in September 2013.
Suspicions are growing over why Park had Choi receive her prescriptions from Chaum under false names when she could have been prescribed the medications by her doctor at Cheong Wa Dae.
What is adding greater suspicion is the fact that Park's doctor did not know about the vitamin shot prescriptions and blood tests. This raised rumors that the medications may not have been vitamin shots but psychotropic drugs or stem cell injections.
Questions have been raised as to why Kim, who was only an advisor, came to Cheong Wa Dae to inject the shots, when Park had a doctor there. It is suspected Kim earned his position as the President's advisor due to his acquaintance with Choi. Kim left Chaum in 2014 and now heads Green Cross I-Med.
On Wednesday, the health ministry suspended Kim's license for 75 days for falsely writing up medical records and giving prescriptions without seeing the patient. It also decided to ask the prosecution to investigate Kim and three other doctors at Chaum for violating the Medical Law.
According to the law, Kim could additionally face up to three years in jail or a fine of up to 10 million won for falsifying medical records. For writing proxy prescriptions, he could be subject to an additional one-year jail term or a 5 million won fine.
