Opposition politicians criticise Kim Keon-hee for acting like a celebrity by comforting sick child on visit to Cambodia with her husband
South Korea’s first lady has been accused of mimicking Audrey Hepburn and using a sick child in Cambodia as “poverty porn” for her own image.
Photos of Kim Keon-hee holding a gaunt young boy with a heart condition and comforting his family at their home were released over the weekend by the presidential office while she was accompanying her husband Yoon Suk-yeol, the South Korean president, in Phnom Penh at a meeting of Asian leaders.
One picture of Ms Kim wearing a short sleeved black shirt and white trousers while carrying the boy in her arms was immediately compared to a shot of Ms Hepburn in Somalia in 1992, when she held onto a starving child at a Unicef feeding centre and stared into the distance.
Korean opposition politicians immediately seized on the chance to criticise Ms Kim for acting like a celebrity and questioned her motives.