Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon. [Yonhap]
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon. [Yonhap]

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon said real estate is the main reason President Lee Jae Myung's approval rating has been falling, and called on the president to take responsibility for the disappearance of jeonse supply.

Oh made the remarks Saturday on Sisajournal TV's program "Jeon Young-gi's Big Shot," referring to President Lee's press conference held Friday.

"Current government policy will keep pushing real estate prices up, not down," Oh said, adding that Friday's press conference showed no sign of a shift in direction on housing policy.

Oh also pushed back again on Lee's claim at the press conference that Oh and others were responsible for the sharp rise in Seoul real estate prices.

Oh said former Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon had dissolved all 389 redevelopment and reconstruction zones in the city, wiping out a potential supply of 430,000 units, and claimed he had explained this to President Lee on multiple occasions.

On Lee's use of the word "leveling" to describe his real estate policy at the press conference, Oh said the surge in prices across Seoul's northeastern and southwestern areas amounted to telling ordinary people to "drop dead." He called it "irresponsible" to brush that off with a single word like "leveling."

On the jeonse shortage in Seoul, Oh said the situation was "entirely of the president's own making," describing the collapse in jeonse listings as "a catastrophe born of an obsession with owner-occupancy."

"The president appears to harbor excessive hostility toward jeonse because it is used for gap investment," Oh said. "He must take responsibility for making jeonse supply disappear."

Oh said treating homeowners as criminals, or treating people who own a home but do not live in it as criminals, was "nothing more than his own personal logic." He warned that if real estate policy was driven by electoral calculations or a desire for short-term results, "the market will never forgive it."

On proposals to build housing in Yongsan Park, Oh reiterated his opposition, saying "not even 1 centimeter of Yongsan Park should be touched."


mss@heraldcorp.com