Cheong Wa Dae, the Blue House

The blue-roofed compound beneath Bugaksan where South Korea's presidents worked for seventy years, the move that emptied it, and the ledger of every president since 1948.

Cheong Wa Dae means "pavilion of blue tiles." The name comes from the roof of the main building, which is covered with about 150,000 glazed blue tiles in the traditional Korean style. The compound sits at the foot of Bugaksan, the mountain behind Gyeongbokgung Palace in the north of Seoul. It was the office and residence of South Korea's presidents from the founding of the republic in 1948 until 2022.

The place

The site was a garden of the Joseon kings, behind their main palace. During the Japanese occupation, the colonial governor-general built an official residence there, and after liberation the new republic took it over. Syngman Rhee, the first president, called it Gyeongmudae. His successor Yun Po-sun renamed it Cheong Wa Dae in 1960, after the blue roof. The present main building was completed in 1991.

In May 2022 President Yoon Suk Yeol moved the presidential office to the Ministry of National Defense building in Yongsan and opened Cheong Wa Dae to the public as a park. Lee Jae Myung, who took office in June 2025, pledged to move the presidency back.

Who held the office

The ledger records 19 terms in the presidency, held by 15 people. The history of South Korea's democracy can be read in the table.

• Park Chung-hee has 3 rows. He took power in a coup in 1961, was elected under a new constitution, and ruled under the authoritarian Yushin constitution from 1972 until he was assassinated in October 1979.
• Choi Kyu-hah appears twice, first as acting president and then as elected president, before he was forced out in 1980.
• Chun Doo-hwan has two rows, one before and one after the 1980 constitution.
• The 1987 constitution, written after mass protests, set a single five-year term with no re-election. Every president since Roh Tae-woo in 1988 has served under it.
• Park Geun-hye's row ends on 10 March 2017, when the Constitutional Court upheld her impeachment. It overlaps Hwang Kyo-ahn's acting row, because her powers were suspended from 9 December 2016 while the court decided.
• Yoon Suk Yeol's row ends on 4 April 2025, when the court upheld his impeachment. The acting presidents who served during his suspension are not yet in the source.

19 tenures. Source: Wikidata, retrieved 2026-09-23.

Last updated September 22, 2026.