Former Daegu Mayor Hong Jun-pyo. [Yonhap]
Former Daegu Mayor Hong Jun-pyo. [Yonhap]

Former Daegu Mayor Hong Jun-pyo sharply criticized the Lee Jae-myung government's real estate policy.

Hong took to his Facebook page on Tuesday, citing a series of recently announced policies. "Great power is a sandcastle," he wrote. "It can collapse in an instant."

"They encourage couples to divorce, tell young people to live in scrapped buses, and block ordinary people from getting loans so they cannot buy homes," he said.

He then said the government was telling retirees to sell their homes and move to the countryside because they cannot afford the tax burden, while driving up official land values to extract taxes from the public.

"That is how the Moon Jae-in administration fell," Hong added.

Earlier that morning, Hong also criticized the government's real estate measures, calling it "an outlandish idea" to now treat jointly owned spousal homes as two separate properties after having previously encouraged joint ownership. He also said the government planned to raise the official land price ratio from the usual 60 percent of market value to 80 percent, amounting to a "tax bomb." "They are importing the failed Moon Jae-in-style real estate tax system, and the measures announced this time reveal a total mess," he said.

He warned that a president who wields power arbitrarily just because they hold it becomes an unhappy president, adding that any administration that drifts away from public sentiment will always collapse.


min3654@heraldcorp.com