The People Power Party is intensifying its assault on the Lee Jae Myung government's economic policies, targeting real estate and the stock market. The main opposition party has reactivated its special committee on real estate policy and is now calling for the dismissal of Cheong Wa Dae policy chief Kim Yong-beom, ratcheting up its offensive on economic issues.
The PPP recently relaunched its Special Committee on Real Estate Policy Normalization, with party leader Jang Dong-hyeok serving as its chair. The committee added new members following the second-half reorganization of National Assembly standing committees, including lawmakers serving as floor managers on the land and transportation, political affairs, and finance committees.
At the committee meeting held Thursday, Jang said the public had repeatedly warned the current administration to "stop anti-market policies" and "listen to dissenting voices." "Despite that, President Lee has kept his ears shut to the people's voices and shown only a posture of non-communication," he said.
He added that as a result, "the Korean stock market has been on a roller coaster, and the real estate market has overheated to the point where it is difficult to bring under control." "The public is criticizing the current administration's ideologically driven economic policies as bad policies that distort markets and make people's lives harder," he said.
In a Facebook post the same day, Jang said the administration's real estate policy goal was "not people's livelihoods but tax increases," and accused it of "forcibly propping up share prices by mobilizing the national pension fund ahead of local elections." "Even with good intentions, national policy rarely goes as planned — but when the intentions themselves are bad, there is no reason to expect good results," he wrote.
Floor leader Jeong Jeom-sik also escalated the attack on Facebook, saying Kim Yong-beom "deserves to be fired for the single mistake alone of pushing through the introduction of single-stock leveraged ETFs."
Jeong said the "AI national dividend" proposal had been "an extreme argument aimed at using corporate performance as kindling for populist policy." He also recalled that Kim had drawn public outrage in May after saying that high interest rates, high inflation and a weak won were "the cost of success."
"It is clear that single-stock leveraged ETFs were a major cause of the Kospi's sharp drop last July, yet Kim instead blamed the volatility on the risk appetite of retail investors," Jeong said. "He is already a villain of the Korean economy. He is not a policy chief but a 'blunder chief.'"
Floor spokesperson Choi Su-jin said in a statement that "policy must be pursued on the basis of public empathy and trust." She said the Lee Jae Myung government and the Democratic Party were dismissing public concerns as "fear marketing" and, rather than heeding criticism of policy failures, were pushing ahead with one-sided policies while repeating only the slogan of "tax normalization."
She also said the PPP "will do its utmost to correct misguided tax reforms that increase the burden on the public, and to put in place effective housing supply expansion and rational tax policy, in order to protect the people's property rights and residential stability."
mp1256@heraldcorp.com
