Freedom to protest at Korean president's door is debated

Members of the Rainbow Action Against LGBT Discrimination hold a protest in front of the Yongsan presidential office on Saturday. [NEWS1]

The Yoon Suk-yeol administration has started work in a new office in Yongsan District.

Can citizens protest in front of it?

That’s the question being debated in legal circles, by the police and the Seoul Administrative Court. As the Yoon Suk-yeol administration has said freedom is one of its core values, the issue has obvious relevance.

When the Rainbow Action Against LGBT Discrimination applied to hold a rally in front of the new Yongsan presidential office just four days after Yoon was sworn into office, the police initially said no. The group appealed to the Seoul Administrative Court, which overturned the ban and allowed the protest rally to happen last Saturday.

But the police appealed the ruling, saying the Assembly and Demonstration Act prohibits assemblies and demonstrations within a 100-meter radius of the resident of the president.

The problem is that Yoon doesn't live there.

Article 11 of the Assembly and Demonstration Act lists places where outdoor assemblies and demonstrations are prohibited, which include within 100 meters of the National Assembly, courts at various levels and the Constitutional Court, the presidential residence and the residences of the National Assembly Speaker and the chief justice of the Constitutional Court.

For 74 years, Korea's presidents worked and lived in the Blue House in central Seoul. Yoon's office in Yongsan is merely that: his office. He is currently commuting from his private residence in Seocho District, while a house in Yongsan formerly used by the minister of foreign affairs is being renovated to become the presidential residence. It is 3 kilometers from the presidential office.

Once the presidential residence and office were separated, the legal basis for a ban on gatherings around the presidential office disappeared. The police are advocating a logic of “fairness” to ban demonstrations around the presidential office.

It says that unlike the National Assembly and the courts, the presidential office has important business going on 24-7 and that a ban on assemblies and demonstrations is needed.

But the Yoon administration doesn't want to be seen as restricting freedom of assembly while claiming to be walking away from an "imperial" presidency and vowing to communicate better with the people.

Within Yoon's PPP, Rep. Ku Ja-keun proposed a partial amendment to the Assembly and Demonstration Act on April 20 to extend the ban on gatherings within 100 meters to the president’s office and residence.

That is likely to face strong opposition from the Democratic Party (DP), which wasn't in favor of the relocation of the presidential office to Yongsan in the first place.

Some say it's a storm in a teacup. The Rainbow Action rally, which took place last Saturday, went off with any problems.

“In the past, it was a trend to regulate assemblies and demonstrations, but now we have to approach them from the concept of management, not restriction,” said Han Sang-hee, a professor of law at Konkuk University Law School. “For example, the pattern of rallies should be different when the president is at work in the office and when he has left the office, and when the traffic is heavy and when there is little traffic.

“The police, civil society, and the presidential security service have to put their heads together to think about what to do. It is necessary to create a rule of mutual understanding and tolerance based on a soft law rather than a hard law,” Han said.

BY WEI MOON-HEE [kjdnational@joongang.co.kr]