Shortly before Yoon Suk Yeol became president, I sawed down a dozen small evergreen trees in the garden right outside my bedroom window.

The new view was worth the effort. I now had a clear line of sight to the north face of that mountain, you know, the one whose name people never quite know, behind the Blue House.

I thought there was some meaning in this. But I wasn't sure what it was. I could no longer see the forest or the trees. But I could see outgoing president's helicopters. Being on the invasion route, we warriors of the Jongno-gu Liberation Front need clear vision.

Then the new president, as readers know, decided not to move there.

He said the Blue House represented authoritarianism. This, I would say, was a mistake. It's true our presidents get a little big for their boots after a year or two. But it's up to the National Assembly to trim their authority, not up to them to pose as humble volunteers while maintaining it.

People suffered to be able to freely elect the country's leaders and the Blue House is where we put them. What this place means for an elected leader is secondary to what it means for us, the people.

Yoon turned his back on our district to live and work somewhere else. I heard that he cleared an area of largely unexplored jungle somewhere south of Gwanghwamun at great public expense.

Anyway, after my exertions, I gave up gardening.

Until this spring. I thought I should dig up the tree stumps and clear the patch properly. This was not easy. After accidentally snapping a prong off the garden fork and heaving at a stump or two like a wimp in the deadlift Olympics, I came into the house to review strategy and have a cup of tea.

The following weekend, I went out with a revised plan. Instead of tugging at the stumps again and expecting a different result, I figured, like a transgender athlete joining the women's competition, a surer way to win. This time I had secateurs. I dug down a bit and snipped away all the little roots. The tap root then came out without so much effort.

Once they were all out, I turned over the soil with a new fork and pulled up the web of roots.

Again, I felt this had some meaning for my life. I get like this sometimes, turning labor into life lessons. It began when I was a student on my first serious rock climb in Glencoe in Scotland and I fell off a cliff face and had to be rescued. It occurred to me, stranded on a ledge, that I should not impatiently overreach in life.

I did this gardening last month on the weekends on either side of the Assembly elections but didn't make that connection at the time. That's just as well because columnists can get full of themselves.

After pulling out the weeds, I planted lettuce, carrots, basil and lavender.

I don't know if they'll take root and grow. I just chucked them in a few grooves in the soil. I'm good at cutting grass and weeding but a novice at planting and, to be honest, I have very little patience when it comes to following instructions, especially when they're in small letters and it's hot in the garden.

I would say that's generally true for manly urban men like me who wear what we call wrist-gloves in Korea – those red and white half-coated things that only cost 2,000 won – to stop our dainty computer fingers getting dirty. We don't have time to take them off and thumb through the Korean-English dictionary. That's why we laugh in the face of instructions and follow our instincts and the pictures.

Still, I'm optimistic. I'm waiting. Nothing has poked up through the dirt yet. But I stand at the window for a few minutes most days looking for something green. I am sure some new weeds have just appeared. But there's no sign yet of my babies.

Have you noticed how, at this time of year, the weeds are like a foot higher than they were last week? But it's like red light, green light. They move too slow to spot them.

This peering is like waiting for change in North Korea. Something tells me the seeds are there moving under the dirt. Perhaps, like North Korea, I should just leave them alone and be patient.

Michael Breen (mike.breen@insightcomms.com) is the author of "The New Koreans."