hankyoreh

A truck from a service for shredding classified documents drives into the Ministry of National Defense complex on April 7, as the ministry prepares to move after President-elect announced he would move the presidential office to the MND. (Kim Hye-yun/The Hankyoreh)

President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol’s chaotic push to relocate the presidential office and the presidential residence out of the Blue House continues. After Yoon himself announced that the presidential residence will be relocated to the Army chief of staff’s official residence, Yoon’s camp is now saying that it’s considering the official residence of the foreign minister as a new option — the reason for this being how “old” the Army chief of staff’s official residence is.

It’s hard not to be amazed by yet another sign of how hasty a job Yoon’s camp has been doing, including with its controversial plan to move the presidential office to Yongsan.

An official with Yoon’s presidential transition team announced Wednesday that the foreign minister’s official residence “is being considered as the most reasonable option [as the temporary presidential residence].” On why the Army chief of staff’s official residence in the Hannam neighborhood is no longer on the table, the official explained that the transition team had “discovered many unreasonable aspects of [the house] overall, which was constructed in 1975 and had become too old.” According to the staffer, rain leaks into the building, which “at this point needs to be rebuilt.”

It’s hard to accept that Yoon’s team found these issues a whole month after Yoon announced on March 20 that he planned to live in the current official residence of the Army chief of staff as president.

With the relocation plan for the presidential residence constantly shifting, the president-elect may have to commute to his office from his personal residence in the Seocho neighborhood long after taking office, prolonging the inconvenience the public would have to face in terms of transportation.

If the foreign minister’s official residence is chosen as the interim presidential residence, a new location for the former, where diplomatic delegations would be greeted, would have to be designated. Once the new presidential residence, to be constructed in the Ministry of National Defense compound, is finished, the president would have to move again. Unnecessary moves would continue to have to take place one after another.

Even though it has insisted that it can move the presidential office out of the Blue House before May 10, Yoon’s inauguration day, the president-elect’s transition team hasn’t even been able to produce a blueprint for the new presidential office. Key divisions of the Defense Ministry won’t be able to move out of their offices until after April 28, the end date of the main exercises currently taking place as part of the joint military exercise between South Korea and the US. The transition team hasn’t even decided which floor the presidential office would occupy.

Things being so chaotic, when asked by reporters where on earth the South Korea-US summit expected to take place around May 20 or May 21 will be held, the official from the transition team sidestepped the question, saying, “There’s nothing to confirm in terms of the facts related to the location of [the summit] when whether the summit will happen hasn’t been confirmed.”

Reportedly, the transition team is considering the Ministry of National Defense Convention Center, the War Memorial of Korea, the National Museum of Korea, and the Grand Hyatt Seoul in the Hannam neighborhood as potential candidates for the temporary presidential residence along with the foreign minister’s official residence.

The president-elect’s stubborn insistence on not setting foot in the Blue House for even one day has led to rush jobs by the presidential transition team trying to relocate the presidential office and the presidential residence, which has resulted in negative long-term effects like wasted taxpayer money and diplomatic confusion. The president-elect should keep in mind that the people are growing concerned by his non-communication and tyranny manifesting even before his inauguration.

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