The most important elements in real estate are said to be location, location and location. Where someone works and lives projects status. Moreover, the presidential mansion stands for the head of state’s power and authority as well as the country’s history and tradition.
By June 4, a day after the early presidential election, we should know who will replace ousted President Yoon Suk Yeol. The election will turn the page on a sordid tenure. The early favorites of the snap election already are positioning themselves to go back in time.
Like a persnickety homebuyer, Yoon ostensibly felt the old seat of executive power was not good enough for him. His decision to abandon the presidential mansion — Cheong Wa Dae, also known as the Blue House — is now seen as a harbinger of the arbitrary decision-making and loud backlash that muddled his presidency.
Immediately after his razor-thin victory on March 9, 2022, the president-elect declared that he would “never spend a single night in the Blue House.” The scramble to relocate the presidential office and residence thus detracted from preparations to address pressing matters of national concern.
Yoon dismissed cautious voices. He argued that long overdue was shedding the “imperial presidency” symbolized by the Blue House and the secluded mansion’s “secrecy and inefficiency.” But his choices were simply befuddling: The Ministry of National Defense compound in the Yongsan, Seoul, long associated with foreign military bases, for his office and the foreign minister’s official residence a few blocks away for his residence.
Both were clearly unthinkable options, given their roles in the nation’s security and international relations, let alone the extreme time constraints and gross overspending to facilitate a chain of moves by the affected organizations, including the Defense Ministry and the Joint Chiefs of Staff headquarters, within several weeks.
The relocations were pushed through arbitrarily, completely ignoring the procedural legitimacy required by the laws concerning the handling of key military facilities and state properties. There were neither any public hearings nor official reports to the National Assembly, when the relocations violated the boundaries of the roles and responsibilities of the transition committee.
The president-elect’s unrelenting stance fueled his standoff with the outgoing president, Moon Jae-in, who feared poor preparedness for North Korea’s provocations, among other vulnerabilities. Amid the chaos, rumors circulated that Yoon was listening mainly to his wife, Kim Keon Hee. She allegedly had close ties with shamans advising that Yongsan was blessed while the Blue House was cursed.
In the meantime, Yoon proved to be seriously lacking in aptitude for communication with journalists. His daily press briefings, a primary reason for the relocation, fizzled out within six months, amid volleys of hard-boiled questions. Dialogue with opposition parties also froze, stoking political animosity and polarization. Opaque decision-making and reckless implementation continued. Yoon’s shocking late-night declaration of martial law on Dec. 3 last year epitomized the former prosecutor and political novice’s arrogance and intransigence.
The bitter irony here is that Yoon’s own misrule led to his downfall. He might have believed that by moving the presidential office out of the Blue House, he could wend off misfortunes. The site of the old presidential mansion was often blamed for the fate of former presidents, who were ousted, imprisoned, or accused of nepotism and corruption involving their family members. Some feng shui experts have asserted that the mountainside lot behind a royal palace is inauspicious.
A crucial reminder from Yoon’s troubled presidency is that what matters is interactions between humans, not those between human and topographic energies as taught by the ancient geomantic theory. Whoever wins the upcoming election should take in the strengths of our former presidents, rather than their individual mishaps, whose combined wisdom and leadership led the “Miracle on the Han.”
In this context, Cheong Wa Dae deserves its place in history as an iconic symbol of the Republic of Korea’s ideals of peace and prosperity. The next president would better rule from this historic place after fully restoring its previous grandeur and remodeling to meet the needs of changing times. The current presidential office, a plain 10-story building, is far from expressing Korea’s history and tradition.
The eight primary contenders of the ruling People Power Party generally appear to be less averse to using the facilities left by Yoon. But with the conservative party facing an uphill battle to retain power, the opposition Democratic Party of Korea is positioned to take the reins. All the party’s three candidates have expressed their intention to work from Sejong, the de facto administrative capital, if elected. In Sejong, a second presidential office is scheduled to open in 2027, with a branch of the National Assembly in 2031.
Lee Jae-myung, the opposition leader and obvious election front-runner, has pledged that, if elected, he will completely relocate the capital to Sejong “with social consensus.” The complete relocation of the capital to Sejong from Seoul is an issue requiring national consensus based on deeper historical insights and future perspectives looking beyond the reunification of the divided peninsula.
The snap election provides no transition period. The next president will be sworn in as soon as the election results are announced. It remains to be seen how the next president displays openness to sound advice and exercise wise judgment to avoid a chaotic relocation 2.0.
Lee Kyong-hee
Lee Kyong-hee is a former editor-in-chief of The Korea Herald. The views expressed here are the writer's own. -- Ed.
