South Korean president refuses official residence because of a curse

Source: https://bit.ly/3wndXNM
For decades, South Korea’s presidents have begun their terms in
office by acquainting themselves with the vast premises of the
Blue House.
But on Tuesday, Yoon Suk-yeol became the first leader in the
country’s modern history to shun the presidential residence, heading
instead to a new office inside a former defence ministry building in
central Seoul.
Yoon, who has styled himself as the “people’s president”, caused
consternation when he said he had no intention of following his
predecessors into the Blue House, so named because of the colour
of its roof.
He said the building, located at the foot of a mountain on a site once
used by the Japanese during their 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean
peninsula, was a “symbol of imperial power” that would be opened
to the public as a sign of his commitment to a more open and
democratic presidency.
Successive South Korean presidents have lived and worked there since
the country became a republic in 1948.
The gesture has not been well received, however. His predecessor,
Moon Jae-in, criticised the move as hasty and a potential security
threat, while even some of his conservative supporters questioned
the decision – estimated to have cost $40m – at a time when Yoon
should be focusing on the economy and North Korea.
Yoon, 61, has been forced to deny that he and his wife had decided
to live elsewhere on the advice of shamanistic healers, whose shady
role in South Korean politics became an issue during the election
campaign.
Yoon said the theory had been cooked up by his political opponents
to discredit him. “The Democratic party seems to be more interested
in shamans than I am,” he told reporters after his election victory
on 9 March, adding that he had considered several locations for
his new office and residence.
He had come under scrutiny over claims that spiritual advisers
introduced by his wife, Kim Kun-hee, had exerted influenced over
his campaign. Kim, 49, had told a YouTube channel that she was
a “spiritual person” who preferred meaningful discussions with gurus
to visiting nightclubs, according to the Yonhap news agency. Yoon
also denied that he had frequented an anal acupuncturist.
There was speculation that Yoon was determined to avoid the Blue
House “curse” that had befallen several of his predecessors,
including the dictator Park Chung-hee, who was assassinated in
the building’s grounds in 1979, and his daughter, Park Geun-hye,
who was impeached and imprisoned for corruption in 2017.