Supply performance remarks at National Assembly audit
'430,000 units lost'; calls on government to provide support
15,000 units broke ground this year; private supply base must expand
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon on Monday pointed to the mass cancellation of redevelopment and reconstruction zones during the tenure of his predecessor, Park Won-soon, as the root cause of Seoul's housing supply shortfall.
Oh made the remarks during a National Assembly audit of the Seoul Metropolitan Government conducted by the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee, after Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Jang Jong-tae said housing supply outside Gangnam had declined during Oh's time in office.
Jang said the average monthly completion rate in the three Gangnam districts rose 11.5 percent after Oh took office compared with before, while the figure fell 43 percent across the remaining 22 autonomous districts. Permit approvals also diverged, Jang said — down 5.3 percent in the three Gangnam districts but down 14.5 percent in the other 22.
Oh pushed back, saying that when Park was mayor, 389 redevelopment and reconstruction zones were dissolved, wiping out roughly 430,000 units of planned housing supply. "Five, ten, fifteen years down the line, project implementation approvals, management and disposal approvals, relocations, groundbreakings and completions were bound to fall in sequence — and that impact is still being felt today," he said.
Oh added that more than 70 percent of the permits behind units completed during Park's tenure had actually been issued during his own first term as mayor. "The side effects that appeared during my second term are the sequential result of what began under the former mayor," he said.
Oh drew on a farming analogy to describe the situation, saying that seeds had been planted and were beginning to sprout when the administration passed to Park, who then "pulled out every seedling and sprayed herbicide before leaving." He said he had returned to till the field, plant new seeds and was now watching the stems rise again. He urged the government to "provide fertilizer and help pull the weeds" so that redevelopment and reconstruction projects could keep moving forward.
Jang also took aim at Oh's decision last year to lift the land transaction permit zone designation covering 291 complexes in the Jamsil, Samsung, Daechi and Cheongdam-dong areas, saying that in the 35 days after the lifting, transactions tripled and transaction values rose 5 trillion won ($3.72 billion). Jang called Oh's characterization of the episode as a "minor incident" a "declaration of self-delusion," saying the move had clearly overheated the market.
Oh said the housing market had been in a slump at the time — in December 2024 — and that major banks had been publishing research reports calling for a response. "The question implies the market was already moving upward when the designation was lifted, but the graph shows otherwise," he said.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government also addressed, through a supplementary press release, Jang's question of whether it was appropriate to expand pre-sale housing while cutting public rental units, thereby reducing the share available to vulnerable residents. The city said its aim was to normalize stalled redevelopment projects by improving their financial viability while securing a genuine increase in both for-sale and rental housing supply.
Oh said the city would continue to expand housing supply by removing unreasonable regulations. In his opening remarks at the audit, he said Seoul had been accelerating redevelopment projects through its fast-track integrated planning scheme, guided by the principle that "sufficient and sustained supply is the starting point for easing residential instability."
He said 15,000 households had broken ground this year and that a modular housing project had yielded its first completion in August. "The supply foundation we have steadily built is now finally translating into groundbreakings and move-ins," he said.
On the rental market, Oh said the city would work to ease the burden of housing costs and broaden the private rental housing supply base to support stability in the leasing market.
lucky@heraldcorp.com
