South Korea’s outgoing liberal government expressed its opposition Monday to a plan by its rival and conservative President-elect Yoon Suk Yeol to relocate the presidential office by his inauguration in May, a development that could put Yoon’s ambitious project in doubt and trigger a domestic political firestorm.
On Sunday, Yoon said he would abandon the current mountainside presidential palace of Blue House and begin his term at a new office established at the Defense Ministry compound in Seoul on May 10. Yoon said his plan requires Defense Ministry staff move to the nearby Joint Chiefs of Staff building at the compound and JCS staff to move in phases to somewhere else in Seoul.
