Small office, big hopes for accessible president

How can the incoming president to show that he is different from his predecessors? One option is lowering the threshold of the Blue House, making the president more accessible to the public and his staff.
The transition team of Roh Moo-hyun, who will take office tomorrow as Korea’s 16th president, announced last week that the offices of some presidential staff members would move into the main office building. Currently, presidential secretaries and the president work in buildings separated by a 10-minute walk.
The design has been criticized as perpetuating authoritarian rule and isolating the president from the people. A former Blue House aide has said that the office design made it almost impossible to say no to former President Kim Young-sam.
Under the Blue House remodeling, according to Mr. Roh’s transition team, the presidential office will be reduced to one-third of its current size. President Kim Dae-jung attended to business in two offices, a large ceremonial one and a smaller one on the second floor of the main office. Mr. Roh will use only the smaller office, with the larger serving as a conference room.
The presidential chief of staff and senior adviser for national security will move into the current conference room and the waiting room in which aides now wait upon the president, both on the second floor of the main building. Another first-floor conference room now used for cabinet meetings will become offices for the director-general for policy planning and presidential advisers. The senior secretary for public information and other secretariats would remain in their existing offices.
The transition team said the remodeling would start in early March and take three months. In a related move, Blue House will be open to all media companies meeting certain conditions, Roh aides reported yesterday. Only certain accredited organizations have been admitted to the Blue House, ostensibly for security reasons.
Mr. Roh is not the first incoming president to make the Blue House more accessible to the public. Restrictions around the presidential compound have been lifted gradually as Korea democratized. Former president Kim Young-sam proudly recalls in his memoirs, published in 2001, that “Seoul citizens welcomed the opening of the citizen’s government as they cheered at the reopening of Mount Inwang.”
The peak behind the Blue House, along with the road running in front of it, had been closed to the public for nearly 25 years. Hiking trails on the mountain had been heavily guarded around the clock, after armed North Korean spies tried unsuccessfully to assassinate President Park Chung Hee in the Blue House in 1968. President Kim reopened the area to hikers immediately after his inauguration in 1992. The fountain in front of the Blue House entrance is one of the attractions visited by the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s City Tour Bus.
Mr. Kim also had the anga (safety house) torn down. There were 12 such houses taking up 29 acres near the presidential residence, where top government and corporate officials had entertained lavishly with food and drink and women ― and where sums of money were delivered. A building used for similar purposes on the Blue House grounds was where President Park was assassinated by his own intelligence chief.
President Kim Dae-jung opened the inside of the Blue House to the public in 1998. More than 1 million people have since taken the one-hour tour of the compound.
Security remains the highest priority. Choi Han-su was taken to the police office in June for conducting a solo demonstration in front of the Blue House. Mr. Choi sued, arguing that solo demonstrations do not violate the law. The Seoul District Court ordered the government to pay him 5 million won ($4,222). The government has appealed.
Photography in front of the Blue House fountain is also tricky. The Jongno Police Precinct said visitors could take photos in certain spots but video recorders are not allowed.

by Koh Han-sun