Reform Party leader Lee Jun-seok. [Yonhap]
Reform Party leader Lee Jun-seok. [Yonhap]

Reform Party leader Lee Jun-seok on Monday took direct aim at President Lee Jae Myung, saying that while there are times a government must act even against majority opposition, "what is needed then is persuasion, and persuasion takes time" — adding that "this government has no time" for that.

Lee made the remarks at a Supreme Council meeting at the National Assembly, noting that the government announced a tax reform package on Aug. 3, only for the president to order a full review of individual savings account restructuring just four days later, on Aug. 7.

He said the Lee Jae Myung administration had inherited a political windfall from the ruins left by the martial law crisis — an environment where it could govern without having to persuade the public. "That was the flip side of martial law, not trust that had been built up," he said. "The public will no longer tolerate a lack of persuasion just because of martial law."

Lee also criticized the Democratic Party by citing President Lee's approval ratings released last week. A Gallup Korea survey conducted from Tuesday to Thursday found that positive assessments of the president's job performance in Seoul had dropped 10 percentage points in a single week, falling from 42 percent to 32 percent, he said. "Three days later, the Democratic Party asks the government to scrap the distinction between owner-occupiers and non-occupiers altogether," Lee said. "Do they really have to try everything out like this first?"

Lee drew a parallel with Prohibition-era America to press his point about the administration's policy consistency. "In 1920, the United States banned alcohol. But alcohol did not disappear, and 13 years later the country repealed the law on its own," he said. "What it learned was that you cannot eliminate alcohol by punishing it."

He then quoted President Lee, who said on July 23 that "the well-located single home has caused serious problems in this country" and that policymakers at the time had intended to respect and protect single-homeowner households. Lee countered that the well-located single home "is not a monster born of the market — it is a detour created by regulation."

Lee continued his criticism of the tax reform package announced Aug. 3. "And yet they reached for regulation again," he said, arguing the package had split homeowners into those who buy a well-located property and those who do not. "The next thing the Democratic Party will have to demonize and divide over is the well-located home where the owner actually lives."

Lee also pressed the president over his "hotel economics" theory, which Lee Jae Myung had floated during his campaign, saying it revealed not so much a low level of understanding as "the flippant attitude with which President Lee Jae Myung approaches policy."

"The philosophical foundation of hotel economics was 'if it doesn't work, never mind,'" Lee said. "It reflects a casualness about not honoring commitments and a shortsightedness that looks only at short-term effects before pulling out. It may work as a 20-odd-day presidential campaign strategy, but it cannot sustain five years of governance."


raining@heraldcorp.com