People Power Party lawmaker Bae Jun-young [provided by Bae's office]
People Power Party lawmaker Bae Jun-young [provided by Bae's office]

Bae Jun-young, a People Power Party lawmaker and the opposition-party floor manager on the National Assembly's fiscal and economic planning committee, said Friday that Seoul tenants would suffer the most from the government's proposed real estate tax overhaul.

Appearing on CBS Radio's "Park Sung-tae's News Show," Bae said the government and ruling party had their priorities backward. "I think the first things to address should be prices, loans, supply and real estate taxation — but they went in reverse order," he said. "Ultimately, the people who will take the direct hit are tenants in Seoul."

He predicted that tenants would end up absorbing the financial burden from the tax changes. "If you raise multiple taxes at once — property holding taxes, capital gains taxes and the rest — landlords will be stuck with nowhere to turn and will inevitably pass the burden on to tenants," Bae said. "Not everyone who owns an extra property or does not live in it is a chaebol."

Bae also cited what he called a lesson from the Moon Jae-in administration's real estate policy failures. "When the Moon government raised property holding taxes, the data afterward showed that jeonse and monthly rent shot up sharply — that is a lesson we have already learned," he said. "The people most opposed to this holding-tax increase are those in their 30s." His remarks reflected the view that any increase in holding taxes would be passed along to jeonse and monthly-rent tenants.

On President Lee Jae-myung's recent remarks describing jeonse as "private finance unique to South Korea" — comments widely seen as critical of the system — Bae said the statement was "driving a nail into the hearts of people in their 30s who are trying to build their lives by using jeonse, a housing ladder, to secure a home." He added that "it would not be an overstatement to say the government has no plan whatsoever when it comes to jeonse and monthly rent."

On the question of housing supply, Bae said the government needed to open the door for private-sector participation. "It would be great if the Korea Land and Housing Corp. built a lot of public rental housing, but it is running large deficits and is in no position to absorb that," he said. "We need to clear a path for the private sector to step in."

He added that the government had stripped away all the benefits previously given to rental business operators, "making it nearly impossible to run a rental business." "There are improvement measures available — such as boosting supply through reconstruction and redevelopment — but pushing ahead with this real estate tax overhaul is a direct blow to people living in jeonse and monthly-rent housing," Bae said.


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