The People Power Party has kept up a sharp offensive against the Lee Jae-myung administration's proposed real estate tax overhaul.
PPP leader Jang Dong-hyeok convened a plenary session of the party's special committee on real estate policy normalization at the National Assembly on Friday, declaring that "President Lee Jae-myung is the cause of the real estate crisis."
"The Lee Jae-myung administration is the main culprit behind creating a real estate hell," Jang said. "It was President Lee himself who stirred up housing prices that had been sitting still, posting on social media every night."
He pressed further, asking whether housing prices had actually been brought under control after the government tightened regulations and restricted loans in the name of curbing them. "They drove up housing prices themselves, and now they're trapping the people while claiming they'll bring prices down," he said.
Jang also took aim at the tax reform package itself, arguing that "the government has stripped the people of their freedom to choose where to live." He said elderly retirees who worked hard to own a single home now face higher property holding taxes and reduced long-term ownership deductions, making it difficult even to keep their homes. "Now they're telling people to move to the provinces with a promise of a capital gains tax break — but selling has become just as hard," he added.
Jang said the changes would deepen the hardship of young people and renters without homes. "If real estate taxes are hiked sharply, landlords have no choice but to move in themselves or raise jeonse and monthly rent prices," he said. "Tenants will either be pushed out or be forced to swallow skyrocketing jeonse and monthly rent against their will."
Jeong Hui-yong, the party's secretary-general, who also attended the session, said the biggest victims of the reform package would be elderly single-homeowners who have lived in the same house for a long time. "This plainly shows that the government's stated policy of distinguishing speculation from genuine residence is moving in reverse," he said, criticizing the proposal as "full of content that only deepens public anxiety."
PPP lawmaker Bae Jun-young pushed back on the government's characterization of the overhaul as a tax normalization measure. "How can you call it normalization when jeonse and monthly rent are surging and people without homes and young renters are suffering?" he said, vowing that the National Assembly's fiscal and economic planning committee would scrutinize the tax bill thoroughly.
Jang closed with a warning. "This administration's real estate policy is one that divides the people," he said. "If they don't change course, the people will change the administration."
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