People Power Party lawmaker Ahn Cheol-soo [Yonhap]
People Power Party lawmaker Ahn Cheol-soo [Yonhap]

People Power Party lawmaker Ahn Cheol-soo took aim at President Lee Jae Myung on Monday, saying he hopes Lee will "invite former President Moon Jae-in, former Land Minister Kim Hyun-mee and former Cheong Wa Dae policy chief Kim Soo-hyun as panelists at the major housing forum."

Writing on his Facebook page Monday, Ahn said the Lee administration plans to hold a major real estate forum Thursday. "Scrap the plan to generate a fleeting buzz with a mega real estate show — what is needed is a forum where we can learn from past failures and lay out fundamental solutions," he said.

Ahn said "more than 1,600 public proposals on housing supply and taxation have been submitted to the government's website. "That speaks to how desperate people are about homeownership and housing insecurity," he added, "yet government policy is moving in the opposite direction from what actual homebuyers expect."

He said it was "particularly striking how closely tightening loan regulations and floating the idea of raising property holding taxes resembles the Moon administration's failed real estate policies."

Ahn said former President Moon "announced 28 rounds of real estate measures, and every one of them failed. Seoul apartment prices doubled, and the Korea Land and Housing Corp. scandal ended in disaster." He said former Minister Kim "promised that if apartments were like bread, she would bake them through the night — but it was all talk, and rather than delivering new supply, she even torpedoed private redevelopment and reconstruction projects."

Ahn said former policy chief Kim "spearheaded heavy taxes on both property holdings and transactions, effectively creating the so-called 'one prized home' phenomenon, yet still managed to push through the reconstruction of his own apartment." He warned that "the shadow of real estate failure that hung over the Roh Moo-hyun and Moon administrations now looms over President Lee as well. All the more reason to learn from those failures," he added.

Ahn said that if Lee can discuss intraparty power dynamics with Moon, "surely he can make that much of a request on real estate — the biggest livelihood issue facing the public." He predicted that "Thursday will likely see a mega real estate show staged to heap praise on President Lee."

He urged the administration to abandon that approach, saying the architects, implementers and those responsible for past policies must "analyze the causes of failure candidly before the public" for the forum to produce genuine alternatives. "Please bear in mind that measures born of collective bias, without learning from failure, will produce yet another failure and plunge the public into hardship," he wrote.


bigroot@heraldcorp.com