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Vladimir Putin's daughter 'to marry the son of South Korean admiral'
Vladimir Putin's youngest daughter is to wed her long-time Korean boyfriend who is the son of a retired South Korean admiral, it has been claimed.
By Andrew Osborn in Moscow
Published: 5:47PM BST 29 Oct 2010
Mr Putin has been determined to keep his daughters out of the public eye Photo: AP
Mr Putin has gone to great lengths to ensure that photographs of his two daughters, Yekaterina, 24, and Maria, 25, stay out of the public domain. The assertion that Yekaterina is to marry – made by an authoritative South Korean newspaper – threatens to undermine the Russian prime minister's painstaking efforts to keep his own personal life and that of his two daughters out of the limelight.
He has also angrily denied repeated allegations that his marriage to Ludmila, the mother of his two daughters, ended some time ago. But the English-language JoongAng Daily newspaper said it had learnt that Yekaterina would soon marry the son of former Admiral Yoon Jong-Gu who worked at the South Korean embassy in Moscow in the 1990s. It said that Mr Putin had initially been opposed to he marriage but had warmed to his prospective son-in-law after meeting him in person.
The 26-year-old man's father was quoted as urging the newspaper not to report the news. "The couple will make an official announcement about their marriage," he said. "Please do not report their marriage now." The paper said the couple would live in South Korea after the wedding and that they had known each other since 1997 when they met at a dance organised at a Moscow international school.
It suggested they had both recently been studying at universities in the United States and had dated in Russia, America and South Korea. Mr Putin's spokesman denied the report, saying it did "not correspond with reality". Even though Mr Putin is Russia's most famous living politician, ordinary Russians know next to nothing about his daughters and would not recognise them if they saw them in the street.
