Police said Wednesday they are investigating a swimming instructor for suspected abuse of a 7-year-old boy in a swimming pool in Busan.

CCTV footage revealed by a local media outlet shows the suspect grabbing the boy’s foot and throwing him into the swimming pool for adults twice at Saha-gu Sports Training Center. 

The swimming instructor also left the boy on the top of the pool’s 1.8-meter-high lookout tower to punish him during a 45-minute lesson in early April.

“After the class was finished, he was crying. So I asked why. He said he had been punished. After checking the CCTV footage, we confirmed there was horrendous abuse,” one of the parents was quoted as saying.

His parents filed a complaint with the city’s Saha district office, which is in charge of the public sports center, and the office reported the case to police.

The swimming instructor said he had done so as a disciplinary measure.

The district office, which has outsourced sports center business to a local university, said the university had been in charge of hiring and managing staff at the sports center.

But it pledged an audit into the personnel at the swimming pool to prevent a recurrence.

(laeticia.ock@heraldcorp.com)