Blue House Brawl: South Korea Spars Over Where Next President Will Live

It has now turn into a political chess piece in a tussle between outgoing and incoming presidential administrations that’s disrupting a switch of energy inside a key U.S. ally and the world’s tenth largest economic system.

“It’s nearly like youngsters preventing over one thing silly,” stated Gi-Wook Shin, a Korea professional at Stanford College. “I’m afraid that there shall be no honeymoon with the brand new administration, and each ruling and opposition events will proceed to battle over each single main difficulty.”

The stakes for a easy transition are excessive after North Korea performed its first full-range intercontinental ballistic missile take a look at in additional than 4 years, prompting South Korea to test-fire land, air and sea missiles of its personal in a present of drive.

President-elect

Yoon Suk-yeol,

a conservative who received by a razor-thin margin earlier this month, desires to show the presidential compound, positioned on the foot of a mountain in northern Seoul, right into a public attraction and relocate to the nation’s Protection Ministry a couple of miles away, close to the middle of town.

The 62-acre Blue Home compound is greater than 3 times the scale of the White Home grounds. Mr. Yoon contends that it symbolizes an emperor’s palace—encased by forestry, distanced from workers and remoted from society.

Outgoing President

Moon Jae-in,

of the left-leaning Democratic Social gathering, begs to vary, saying a swift relocation might compromise nationwide safety by uprooting army officers and leaving a safe compound on the Blue Home. Mr. Moon’s administration has refused to launch the roughly $40 million in funds wanted to change locales.

The showdown illustrates how even customary handoffs of energy have turn into a political prize battle in South Korea. It follows a presidential race stuffed with mudslinging that South Koreans dubbed the “most off-putting election.” Mr. Yoon takes workplace Could 10.

Almost three-fifths of South Koreans oppose transferring the Blue Home, with simply one-third backing the relocation plan, based on a latest ballot. Greater than 477,000 South Koreans have signed an internet petition that argues that transferring the Blue Home is a waste of taxpayer cash and represents a compelled relocation executed just for Mr. Yoon’s satisfaction.

The rifts are extending past the presidential palace. The

Kim Jong Un

regime’s test-fire of artillery on March 20 violated an inter-Korean accord to tone down army hostilities, Mr. Yoon stated; the Moon administration disagreed. The 2 sides issued conflicting reviews over whether or not Mr. Yoon had been consulted for the appointment of the nation’s high central-banking official. A deliberate assembly between Messrs. Moon and Yoon after the election has been delayed.

Mr. Yoon, a 61-year-old former prosecutor and political neophyte, crafted himself as a decisive chief and made abandoning the Blue Home a outstanding marketing campaign promise. There’s zero probability he’ll transfer into the presidential palace, his spokeswoman stated not too long ago, including that he would work from his short-term places of work after Could 10 if the brand new amenities aren’t prepared.

The proposed relocation might require lots of of South Korean Protection Ministry officers to maneuver to an adjoining constructing at the moment housing the Joint Chiefs of Employees, whose personal personnel can be rotated out in phases. The transfer would take a minimum of 4 weeks, based on Seoul’s army. Mr. Yoon has stated he might construct a smaller residence contained in the Protection Ministry compound or use one of many close by, off-site venues assigned to senior army officers.

Chun In-bum, a retired three-star South Korean military common, stated the displacement of army personnel brings the potential to trigger some logistical gaps. Even minor particulars, reminiscent of the place officers would take their meals throughout coaching workout routines, have to be reconfigured, by no means thoughts the duty of safeguarding an space surrounded by high-rise buildings with direct views on the important thing amenities, he added.

“In an ideal world, we might construct the power first, then transfer in,” Gen. Chun stated.

The Blue Home, or Cheongwadae in Korean, is a compound constructed on what had been royal gardens in the course of the centurieslong Joseon Dynasty. The positioning was utilized by the Japanese throughout its colonial rule from 1910 to 1945.

South Korea’s earliest leaders, who had positioned the nation underneath dictatorial rule, saved the presidential compound underneath tight safety and off-limits to civilians—particularly after a crew of North Korean commandos got here near reaching the Blue Home in a foiled 1968 assassination try of the nation’s chief on the time.

After South Korea was democratized within the late Nineteen Eighties, a sequence of presidents pledged to open the Blue Home to the general public. That features Mr. Moon, who earlier than taking workplace in 2017, pledged to vacate the presidential palace a lot as Mr. Yoon is promising now. “I’ll cease by the market after leaving work so I can discuss candidly with residents,” Mr. Moon stated in a nationwide handle after being sworn into workplace.

The efforts later fizzled out, as different venues didn’t have the mandatory amenities, reminiscent of a helicopter pad or a reception corridor to host abroad dignitaries. Re-creating safety measures in a brand new constructing, from underground bunkers to safe communications, was one other complicating issue.

The notion that South Korea’s chief holds unchecked energy—shaped when the nation was a army dictatorship—has lingered for a lot of South Koreans, and the Blue Home has symbolized that, stated Kim Dong-no, a sociology professor at Yonsei College in Seoul.

For example, the net petition system, which Mr. Moon created early in his tenure, is designed in order that any submission that surpasses 200,000 signatures triggers a Blue Home response. However many petitions handle subjects that fall effectively exterior the president’s energy, reminiscent of impeaching judges, Mr. Kim stated.

“That simply reveals how Korean folks suppose,” he stated. “They imagine the president can do something in Korea.”

Write to Timothy W. Martin at timothy.martin@wsj.com