Yu Seung-min says Lee dodged jeonse crisis question, revealing 'policy vacuum'

Former lawmaker posts Facebook critique of presidential press conference

'No reflection on real estate failures … bleak'

President Lee Jae Myung answers reporters' questions at a press conference held at Cheong Wa Dae's Yeongbingwan on Friday. [Yonhap]

Former People Power Party lawmaker Yu Seung-min said Friday that "reform" was the word President Lee Jae Myung used most at his nationally televised press conference — including in his opening remarks — but that he could not recall a single reform the president had actually carried out in the past 15 months.

Yu posted his assessment on Facebook, saying he gave the press conference partial credit for showing "self-reflection on governance failures and a posture of humility and apprehension before the sovereign people," but flagged shortcomings on specific issues including the withdrawal of indictments, the abolition of prosecutors' supplementary investigative powers, and real estate policy.

Yu said he viewed positively the president's statements that he had "absolutely no intention of seeking a second term" and that clauses on the transfer or disposition of existing indicted cases would be deleted from the fabricated-indictment special prosecutor act, saying those remarks "will help ease public concern over a constitutional amendment to allow re-election and over the withdrawal of indictments."

He said it was nonetheless "regrettable and unsatisfying" that Lee had not stated clearly that "under no circumstances will indictments or trials be withdrawn — I will stand trial according to the law after leaving office." Yu also called for the immediate rescission of the nomination of Kim Seung-won — who had led the Democratic Party of Korea's caucus pushing for indictment withdrawals — as minister of justice, saying it was necessary to "dispel public suspicion on this matter."

On the abolition of prosecutors' supplementary investigative powers, Yu said that if the president himself acknowledged the need for mutual checks among powerful institutions, "prosecutors must retain supplementary investigative powers for checks and balances between the prosecution and police to be possible — simply calling for police reform while in practice allowing police to monopolize investigative authority solves nothing."

On the president's answers regarding real estate policy, Yu said it was "bleak" that Lee had casually described the surge in Greater Seoul home prices as "stabilization" without any reflection on policy failures, deflected blame onto the Yoon Suk Yeol administration, and showed no intention of fundamentally correcting flawed taxes and regulations — a sign, Yu said, that "there will be no real change on the real estate front going forward."

Yu said nearly half of all residents in the Greater Seoul area live as jeonse or monthly-rent tenants, yet "the situation of having no measures for the jeonse and monthly-rent crisis continues." A reporter had pressed the president on jeonse and monthly-rent policy after noting that Lee had previously described jeonse as "a peculiar form of private finance unique to Korea that should disappear," only for Lee to respond that he had said it "would disappear," not that it "should disappear," and then dismiss the question without offering any substantive answer on the crisis. "The president's brushing aside of the question is a perfect illustration of this government's complete absence of policy on jeonse and monthly rent," Yu said.

Yu said the public was asking what the president actually meant by "reform," given that Lee had been calling himself a "reform president" while doing "absolutely nothing" on pension reform, labor reform, welfare reform, healthcare reform, education reform, or measures to overcome the low birth rate — reforms he described as "truly difficult but absolutely necessary for the future of the country and its people."

Earlier Friday, at the press conference held at Cheong Wa Dae's Yeongbingwan, a reporter cited the current jeonse shortage and recalled that Lee had previously described jeonse as a peculiar private-finance system unique to Korea and said it was a "system that should gradually disappear," asking whether he still held that view. Lee replied that he recalled saying it "would disappear," then pushed back: "I said it would disappear — when did I ever say it should disappear? That makes the question meaningless. I'll take it as replaced by that." The exchange had been expected to yield a substantive response on jeonse and monthly-rent policy, but Lee dismissed it without one.

Lee identified the fundamental drivers of rising home prices as the concentration of population in the Greater Seoul area and the "myth of real estate as an infallible investment," and cited shorter-term factors including a contraction in housing supply, economic growth, and market liquidity. He claimed that building permits and ground-breakings had been cut in half from 2022 onward — after the Yoon Suk Yeol administration took office and Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon was elected. He also said that with supply already sharply reduced between 2022 and 2025, the lifting of land transaction permit zones had caused home prices to spike in certain areas.

Earlier, at a press conference marking his first anniversary in office in June, Lee had addressed the jeonse shortage by saying that jeonse was "a kind of private finance that exists uniquely in South Korea and is now fading away," adding that "a process of normalization is needed" and that "a decline in jeonse supply is only natural."

jshan@heraldcorp.com