Tag: Blue House

I took a Blue House tour many years ago that was closely monitored by security and I didn’t really get to see much. I definitely need to go back and experience visiting the place without any security restrictions since it is now fully open to the public:

 Cheong Wa Dae was flooded with thousands of visitors Tuesday morning, the first day the former presidential office and residence fully opened to the public after new President Yoon Suk-yeol relocated the top office. 

Following an opening ceremony, more than 6,000 people entered the compound in central Seoul at 11:38 a.m. to look around the 250,000-square-meter space, including the main office building and the residence that were used by South Korean presidents for the past 74 years, as well as gardens and the state guest house of Yeongbingwan.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

A whole bunch of friends of President Moon have been illegally receiving monthly government checks:

Close associates of President Moon Jae-in received illegal monthly payments while serving in top posts of presidential advisory groups, the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) said Thursday.    
   
According to the BAI’s latest audit of the Blue House, the Presidential Committee on Balanced National Development paid 4 million won ($3,400) in monthly salary to Song Jae-ho from January 2019 to last January. Song was head of the committee during the period, and he received 52 million won in total.    
   
The committee chairman is a part-time position, so Song was not eligible for a monthly salary. The committee explained to the BAI that it paid the monthly salary to Song because he served full-time as a consultant.    
   
The BAI concluded the payments violated the law governing the committee, which prohibited any routine payment of a fixed consulting fee to the chairman. 

Joong Ang Ilbo via a reader tip

You can read more about other friends of President Moon that were given so called advisors jobs and received illegal monthly payments. Apparently the Blue House is very upset with the new BAI Chairman Choe Jae-hyeong, for uncovering this scheme:

The audit report was announced amid escalated tensions between BAI Chairman Choe Jae-hyeong and the administration.   

After Choe took office in 2018, the practice of going easy on the Blue House ended. For the first time in 15 years, the BAI conducted aggressive audits on the Blue House. Eight audits were conducted in 2018 and seven in 2017.   

In recent months, the BAI went further and conducted audits on four presidential committees for the first time since Moon took office.    
   
The BAI’s report also said the Blue House had violated the law governing contracts involving the government when it created a video clip to celebrate Children’s Day in May. The BAI said the Blue House paid a subcontractor 50 million won without following proper legal procedures.   

Joong Ang Ilbo

At the link you can read how the Blue House is upset with Choe for not ruling favorably on nuclear project; they then were pressuring him to step down. When he wouldn’t they then tried to get a ruling party confidant appointed to the BAI board which Choe refused. Choe said he wants a neutral candidate to fill the opening. The audit of the Blue House is believed to be Choe’s counterattack against the ruling party’s attempts to remove him.

It will be interesting to see if anything happens to all these people that received illegal government payments. It seems at a minimum they should have to pay it all back.

This is actually pretty clever thing for the Moon administration to do:

President Moon Jae-in offered a virtual tour of his office for kids Tuesday, as a replacement for an annual Children’s Day event on the Cheong Wa Dae lawn, due to the coronavirus.

Moon and first lady Kim Jung-sook participated in the production of a special video clip using the format of Minecraft, a popular sandbox video game.

With recordings of their voices and messages inserted as Minecraft characters, the clip features a tour of Cheong Wa Dae and a press briefing by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the country’s response to COVID-19.

Moon pointed out that children nationwide have been kept out of school for months.

“We are overcoming the coronavirus thanks to your patience,” the president said. “Please remember that just as you do, adults are endeavoring to beat the virus we are going through for the first time. We all are heroes.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This is just another example of how South Korea is a rule by law country instead of a rule of law country:

Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae expressed intent on Thursday to order an internal probe into prosecutors that brought charges against a presidential secretary for suspected misconduct, calling it a rash move that did not follow due process.

Choo delivered her message to the press after an anti-corruption team at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office earlier in the day indicted Choi Kang-wook, a presidential secretary for public office discipline, for fabricating an internship certificate for former Justice Minister Cho Kuk’s son. 

The prosecution team reportedly bypassed its boss, Lee Seong-yun, head of the Seoul prosecution office, as he refused to sign off on the indictment, and went ahead with filing the charges with the approval of Prosecutor-General Yoon Seok-youl.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It appears the prosecutors office is trying to quickly seize what evidence they can to support their corruption investigations before the new ROK Justice Minister completely gets it shut down:

Cheong Wa Dae expressed strong regret Friday over state prosecutors’ attempt at what it called a reckless search of the presidential office.

Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office in the morning sent a team of investigators to Cheong Wa Dae with a search warrant for the office of a unit that handles policies related to support for provincial governments.

It was part of an intensive probe into allegations that President Moon’s aides had meddled in the 2018 Ulsan mayor election in which Song Cheol-ho, Moon’s longtime friend, won.

Prosecutors failed to enforce the warrant due to Cheong Wa Dae’s refusal to cooperate.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Something to remember is that a Patriot battery is not going to protect Seoul against North Korea’s artillery which is the real defense problem for the nation’s capitol:

A Patriot surface-to-air missile battery has recently been installed on Mount Bukak near Cheong Wa Dae in central Seoul, according to political sources, Tuesday. The battery system reportedly consists of a launcher for PAC-2 (Patriot advanced capability-2) missiles and another one for PAC-3 missiles.

The deployment of the unit in Seoul is aimed at strengthening the defense of the capital. The plan was devised after South Korea allowed the United States to deploy a terminal high-altitude area defense (THAAD) battery in Seongju, North Gyeongsang Province in 2017. While the THAAD system has strengthened the defense of the southern part of the Korean Peninsula, concerns have been that defense of the capital area was relatively weak.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

There is yet another corruption probe into the Blue House where a key witness was found dead:

An investigator at the Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors’ Office who was previously dispatched to work for the Blue House was found dead on Sunday afternoon in an apparent suicide, just hours before he was scheduled to appear for questioning in a widening election-meddling probe.

The investigator, who was only identified as a 48-year-old man, was found dead on Sunday at around 3 p.m. in an office owned by his acquaintance in Seocho District, southern Seoul, according to police.  

Police found in the office what appeared to be a handwritten note, in which the investigator apologized to his family. Police said the memo did not contain anything about the probe he was involved in.  

Just three hours later, he was supposed to appear at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office as a witness to offer his testimony about his time in the Blue House senior secretary for civil affairs office. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but this investigator was going to testify about Blue House officials that had improperly tampered with the election of the city of Ulsan’s mayor. This alleged tampering allowed a left-wing candidate with close ties to President Moon win the election.

There is yet another corruption scandal involving the Blue House:

Prosecutors raided the Blue House Wednesday for documents related to allegations that the presidential office covered up a probe into the former Busan vice mayor and accusations that he took bribes. 

The Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors’ Office announced that it dispatched its prosecutors and investigators to the Blue House at 11:30 a.m. to accept related documents from Blue House officials without physically entering the main Blue House premises. 

It was the third time that prosecutors carried out a raid of the Moon Jae-in Blue House, all conducted in a manner that respected the security sensitivity of the area.

Yoo Jae-soo, Busan’s former vice mayor for economic affairs, is under investigation for allegedly taking nearly 50 million won ($42,400) in bribes. On Nov. 27, a court in Seoul issued a pretrial detention warrant for Yoo, and he’s now detained at the Seoul Eastern Detention Center in Songpa District, southern Seoul.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but the corruption at the Blue House links backed to ousted Justice Minister Cho Kuk and claims the government was spying on private citizens.