Blue house brawl: South Korea spars over where next president will live

SEOUL—South Korea’s political division runs so deep now that the country can’t agree where the next president should live and work.

For more than seven decades, the presidential Blue House—named after the color of the roof tiles—has served as the official residence of South Korea’s head of state.

It has now become a political chess piece in a tussle between outgoing and incoming presidential administrations that is disrupting a transfer of power inside a key U.S. ally and the world’s 10th largest economy.

“It’s almost like children fighting over something stupid,” said Gi-Wook Shin, a Korea expert at Stanford University. “I am afraid that there will be no honeymoon with the new administration, and both ruling and opposition parties will continue to fight over every single major issue.”

The stakes for a smooth transition are high after North Korea conducted its first full-range intercontinental ballistic missile test in more than four years, prompting South Korea to test-fire land, air and sea missiles of its own in a show of force.

President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol, a conservative who won by a razor-thin margin earlier this month, wants to turn the presidential compound, located at the foot of a mountain in northern Seoul, into a public attraction and relocate to the country’s Defense Ministry a few miles away, near the center of the city.

The 62-acre Blue House compound is more than three times the size of the White House grounds. Mr. Yoon contends that it symbolizes an emperor’s palace—encased by forestry, distanced from staff and isolated from society.

Outgoing President Moon Jae-in, of the left-leaning Democratic Party, begs to differ, saying a swift relocation could compromise national security by uprooting military officials and leaving a secure compound at the Blue House. Mr. Moon’s administration has refused to release the roughly $40 million in funds needed to switch locales.

The showdown illustrates how even customary handoffs of power have become a political prize fight in South Korea. It follows a presidential race filled with mudslinging that South Koreans dubbed the “most off-putting election.” Mr. Yoon takes office May 10.

Nearly three-fifths of South Koreans oppose moving the Blue House, with just one-third backing the relocation plan, according to a recent poll. More than 477,000 South Koreans have signed an online petition that argues that moving the Blue House is a waste of taxpayer money and represents a forced relocation executed only for Mr. Yoon’s satisfaction.

The rifts are extending beyond the presidential palace. The Kim Jong Un regime’s test-fire of artillery on March 20 violated an inter-Korean accord to tone down military hostilities, Mr. Yoon said; the Moon administration disagreed. The two sides issued conflicting reports over whether Mr. Yoon had been consulted for the appointment of the country’s top central-banking official. A planned meeting 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 leader and made abandoning the Blue House a prominent campaign promise. There is zero chance he will move into the presidential palace, his spokeswoman said recently, adding that he would work from his temporary offices after May 10 if the new facilities aren’t ready.

The proposed relocation could require hundreds of South Korean Defense Ministry officials to move to an adjacent building currently housing the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose own personnel would be rotated out in phases. The move would take at least four weeks, according to Seoul’s military. Mr. Yoon has said he could build a smaller residence inside the Defense Ministry compound or use one of the nearby, off-site venues assigned to senior military officials.

Chun In-bum, a retired three-star South Korean army general, said the displacement of military personnel brings the potential to cause some logistical gaps. Even minor details, such as where officials would take their meals during training exercises, need to be reconfigured, never mind the task of safeguarding an area surrounded by high-rise buildings with direct views on the key facilities, he added.

“In a perfect world, we would build the facility first, then move in,” Gen. Chun said.

The Blue House, or Cheongwadae in Korean, is a compound built on what had been royal gardens during the centurieslong Joseon Dynasty. The site was used by the Japanese during its colonial rule from 1910 to 1945.

South Korea’s earliest leaders, who had placed the country under dictatorial rule, kept the presidential compound under tight security and off-limits to civilians—especially after a team of North Korean commandos came close to reaching the Blue House in a foiled 1968 assassination attempt of the country’s leader at the time.

After South Korea was democratized in the late 1980s, a series of presidents pledged to open the Blue House to the public. That includes Mr. Moon, who before taking office in 2017, pledged to vacate the presidential palace much as Mr. Yoon is promising now. “I will stop by the market after leaving work so I can talk candidly with citizens,” Mr. Moon said in a national address after being sworn into office.

The efforts later fizzled out, as alternative venues didn’t have the necessary facilities, such as a helicopter pad or a reception hall to host overseas dignitaries. Re-creating security measures in a new building, from underground bunkers to secure communications, was another complicating factor.

The perception that South Korea’s leader holds unchecked power—formed when the country was a military dictatorship—has lingered for many South Koreans, and the Blue House has symbolized that, said Kim Dong-no, a sociology professor at Yonsei University in Seoul.

For instance, the online petition system, which Mr. Moon created early in his tenure, is designed so that any submission that surpasses 200,000 signatures triggers a Blue House response. But many petitions address topics that fall well outside the president’s power, such as impeaching judges, Mr. Kim said.

“That just shows how Korean people think,” he said. “They believe the president can do anything in Korea.”

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