The ruling and opposition parties are locked in a sharp exchange over economic policy, with disputes over housing supply, individual savings accounts and leveraged stock funds dominating the debate. The Democratic Party of Korea is blaming the previous administration for the current housing shortage while defending President Lee Jae Myung's order to review a proposed overhaul of the individual savings account, or ISA, regime. The People Power Party, meanwhile, has labeled the tax reform package a "tax bomb" and called for a parliamentary investigation and special prosecutor to examine the introduction of single-stock leveraged exchange-traded funds.
Han Byung-do, the Democratic Party's acting leader and floor leader, said at a floor strategy meeting Monday that "the incompetence of the Yoon Suk Yeol administration, Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon and the People Power Party — which was then the ruling party — is the main culprit behind the current supply cliff." He added that follow-up legislation for a housing supply package the government announced last September remains stalled on the National Assembly floor because of what he called obstruction by the People Power Party.
On the second real estate policy review meeting that President Lee chaired on Friday, Han said the session "confirmed the president's firm resolve to stabilize the real estate market," and pledged that the Democratic Party would "swiftly pass the necessary legislation to join the government's push to accelerate housing supply."
Han also backed the president's order to revisit the ISA reform proposal. He said the ISA is "a regime designed to support the long-term asset formation of young people and ordinary retail investors," and that "it is only natural to take another look, given concerns that reduced choices and benefits could undermine public trust in the policy."
He further said that legislation to prevent artificial share price suppression "must also be made more airtight," calling for effective measures to block deliberate stock price manipulation aimed at reducing inheritance and gift taxes and to protect the rights of minority shareholders.
The People Power Party pushed back, accusing the government of scrambling to contain the fallout from its own economic policies. People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyeok said at a supreme council meeting Monday that retail investors in the stock market had suffered losses exceeding 200 trillion won ($141 billion), and that investors in a Samsung Electronics-SK Hynix ETF had seen returns fall more than 60 percent. "Young people are having their dreams and assets stolen in a gambling den created by this administration," he said.
Jang called for a special prosecutor to determine "who designed the single-stock leveraged ETF and who gave the final order," adding that President Lee "will not be able to escape responsibility."
Floor leader Jeong Jeom-sik said that when retail investor backlash erupted over the ISA provisions in the newly announced tax reform package, the president ordered a review and then criticized officials for not having examined the tax implications — a sequence Jeong described as "the result of populist live-broadcast show politics focused only on staging a satisfying scene at civil servants' expense, rather than responsibly putting in place measures to prevent a recurrence."
He called on the government to "scrap the loan-restriction and tax-heavy real estate policy framework" and to "hold accountable the policy officials who introduced the single-stock leveraged ETF."
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