Korea's new Blue House and the dawn of an uneasy transition
Picture of Yoon explaining his plan for the new Blue House. Photo: Choe Sang-Hun / The New York Times
South Korea is going through a particularly tough transition of power for the future government due to various matters, including the move of the Blue House, which is Korea’s counterpart of the United States’ White House. The Blue House problem is not a new problem that surfaced during the current transition. Rather, it has been exacerbated by political conflicts and scandals between the two biggest parties of Korea, the Democratic Party led by the current President Moon, and the People’s Power Party led by the president-elect Yoon.
The Korean Presidents’ residence has been one of the most sensitive issues for the Korean government due to the presence of North Korea and the past threat of assassination carried out by North Korean spies. Since then, the Korean government has put the President’s security as its top priority and minimized press exposure of the Blue House in an effort to increase security.
However, with the Blue House situated away from the city of Seoul and its minimized exposure to the media and the public, some argue that it can negatively affect presidents by allowing them to be surrounded by elected officials rather than the public, which can result in a faulty sense of confidence in government operation.
Picture of Yoon Suk-yeol in celebration of being elected as Korea’s next president by his party members. Photo: Kim Jaewon / Nikkei Asia
Yoon embraced this idea and supported the move of the Blue house to a more public location somewhere in the heart of Seoul to be a more public-caring leader. After being elected as the next president, Yoon decided to move the Blue House to the current location where the Ministry of National Defense is located in Yongsan-gu, in an effort to make it more public. While it is easy to think that Yoon was the first president to propose and support this idea, President Moon also fully supported this idea but failed to execute it due to the constraint regarding the president’s security.
Ironically, Moon’s administration and the Democratic Party have strongly opposed the idea of the new Blue House and shown clear frustration with Yoon’s proposal. Moon’s administration has attempted to dissuade the public and Yoon by claiming that the estimated relocation expense will be exponentially higher than Yoon’s estimation of $40 million. Amidst Yoon’s firm stance, however, Moon’s administration passed the budget for the relocation of the Blue house but only for about two-thirds ($29.5 million) of Yoon’s estimated expense.
Other than the Blue house issue, the current transition of power from President Moon to Yoon has been extremely rough with stalemates on multiple issues. One of them is President Moon’s recent appointment of Bank of Korea’s Chief very close to the end of his presidential term. This sparked furious opposition from the People’s Power Party who denounced Moon’s decision to be a strategic move to keep pro-Moon officials during Yoon’s presidential term. A similar issue also arose when Moon elected DMSE (Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering)’s new CEO as it turns out that the elected person is a friend of Moon with the same accusation made by Yoon's side. For now, it does not seem like the transition is going to get any smoother.