Housing remains the country's most pressing domestic issue.
A home is the most fundamental foundation of life — the space where families are built and lives are shared. For that reason, a home carries meaning far beyond that of a simple piece of property. For many Koreans, it is also the cornerstone of a lifetime of wealth-building, with middle-class families often spending decades saving to own one.
Housing is, in essence, life itself — a problem too complex and fundamental to be solved by government directives alone.
Real estate has once again become a top national concern. With sale prices, jeonse deposits and monthly rents all rising, housing costs have emerged as the public's single biggest worry.
The government, recognizing the issue as serious enough to threaten its political standing, has rolled out a range of tax and supply measures — but a clear solution has yet to emerge.
Against that backdrop, Prime Minister Han Seong-suk invited the mayors of all 25 of Seoul's autonomous districts to her official residence Friday evening to hear their views on the housing crisis. The gathering was the first of its kind, lending it particular significance.
"Housing supply measures must be implemented swiftly to stabilize residential conditions for the public," Han said. "We intend to focus on accelerating supply by mobilizing every available tool and resource to address the housing shortage." She added that she had arranged the meeting specifically "to listen carefully to the district mayors, who know best what residents want, and to reflect their insights in policy."
That instinct is well-founded. District mayors live and work alongside their constituents around the clock, 365 days a year — serving as frontline problem-solvers who hear and address the grievances and conflicts of local residents. In Seoul, no one understands the pain and hardship of ordinary residents better than they do.
Prime Minister Han holds housing roundtable with Seoul district mayors — a meaningful first step
For all these reasons, the prime minister's decision to sit down with the mayors of Seoul's 25 districts was a welcome one.
Han had previously drawn public criticism after cutting off Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon mid-speech at a Cabinet meeting when he raised his views on real estate solutions.
Perhaps with that in mind, Friday's roundtable proceeded in earnest for two hours and 15 minutes, with 21 of Seoul's 25 district mayors in attendance.
Lee Seung-ro, mayor of Seongbuk-gu and chair of the Seoul District Mayors' Council, was quoted as saying he hoped the meeting would "produce concrete methods and solutions for rapidly supplying housing."
Other district mayors called for accelerating redevelopment and reconstruction projects to expand housing supply, along with regulatory reforms to improve project viability and a strengthening of district mayors' authority.
Yongsan-gu District Mayor Kim Gyeong-dae and Seocho-gu District Mayor Jeon Seong-su both raised concerns related to the Yongsan development project.
Jeon, a two-term mayor who previously served as head of the Seoul Metropolitan Government's general affairs division, senior administrative official at Cheong Wa Dae, spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior and Safety, and vice mayor of Incheon, said: "Today's meeting is about hearing views on housing supply, but I want to convey the voices from the ground in Seocho-gu directly to the prime minister. Since the government announced its tax measures, residents have been feeling anxious, frustrated and deeply aggrieved." He added that constituents had told him: "We worked hard our whole lives to buy one home and raised our children there — why is the government making things so difficult for us?"
Jeon also said that "Yongsan Park and Yeouido Park are not empty land," and argued that in the AI era, the focus should not be on building housing alone but on creating "live-work-play compact cities" that integrate residential, employment and leisure functions. He also remarked that while the first vice minister of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and the second deputy minister of the Office for Government Policy Coordination were present, it would have been even better had a Seoul Metropolitan Government vice mayor also attended — a sentiment Han was said to have shared.
Ryu Gyeong-gi, the three-term mayor of Jungnang-gu known as a "master administrator" for his background as Seoul Metropolitan Government spokesperson, head of administrative affairs, chief of planning, and first vice mayor for administration, said "finding vacant land in Seoul is no easy task" and argued that "ultimately, the answer to increasing housing supply lies in finding ways to push redevelopment and reconstruction projects forward more quickly."
He particularly stressed the need to ease the criteria for purchasing rental housing to improve the viability of redevelopment and reconstruction projects, and to transfer some authority over urban renewal projects — currently concentrated in the hands of the Seoul mayor — to district mayors.
Jin Kyo-hoon, mayor of Gangseo-gu and a former deputy commissioner of the Korean National Police Agency, called for expanding housing supply by relaxing height restrictions around Gimpo Airport, among other measures.
Han closed the meeting by pledging to listen fully to the district mayors' wide-ranging views and ensure they are reflected in policy.
"The government must humbly heed the public's voice"
When it comes to people's livelihoods, there is no room for partisan division. It is the duty of both the government and the political establishment to work together to ease the public's hardship.
In that light, Friday's meeting between the prime minister and Seoul's district mayors carries real weight. The fact that the central government directly heard from district mayors — officials who deal with residents on the front lines every day — is itself a meaningful first step.
But what matters most is what comes next. The key question is how much of the practical input raised by the district mayors will actually be reflected in government policy. This roundtable must not end as a one-time show.
Problems exist to be solved. The time has come for policymakers to listen with humility to the public's voice and translate the solutions that emerged from the field into real, actionable policy.
seouldream01@heraldcorp.com
