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| A signboard image of President Park Geun-hye at her birthplace in Dongseongno Street, Jung-gu district in Daegu, is covered in red paint top to bottom. / Yonhap |
Police have arrested a man who sprayed red paint on a signboard image of President Park Geun-hye out of rage against the scandal-ridden president.
The man, surnamed Baek, 50, was arrested at his home in Samdeok-dong, Jung-gu district in Daegu, on Saturday at around 5:40 p.m., according to Daegu Jungbu Police Station.
Baek is accused of property damage by spray-painting the sign at the President's birthplace in the middle of the city's busy Dongseongno Street at around 2:03 a.m. Friday.
The sign ― 70 centimeters wide and 240 centimeters long ― which originally showed Park smiling and waving while holding a flower, was covered in crimson red from top to bottom.
The district erected the sign on Feb. 25, 2013, to celebrate Park's inauguration in February the same year.
The destroyed sign was reported to police a few hours after the incident, and officials removed the sign immediately.
"Baek confessed that he sprayed the sign in a fit of anger about Park's political crimes while he was drunk," a police official said, after viewing CCTV footage.
"But he does not belong to any political party or organization."
District officials said they did not plan to re-erect the sign.
The former president Park Chung-hee, the incumbent president's father, and his late wife Yuk Young-soo spent their early married years in the area, where Park Geun-hye was born in February 1952.
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