People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyeok. [Yonhap]
People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyeok. [Yonhap]

People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyeok said Wednesday that President Lee Jae Myung appeared rattled after dismissing media coverage of his housing remarks as "fake news." "Now that every media outlet is criticizing him all at once, he seems to be burning up inside," Jang said.

In a Facebook post, Jang said Lee's framing revealed a deeper problem. "The fact that he only considered the three Gangnam districts to be major areas was wrong from the start," Jang said. "He essentially confessed that the goal of his real estate policy is to beat down Gangnam."

Jang also pushed back on Lee's defense of his record. "Even the three Gangnam districts have not fallen by any remarkable amount," he said. "Everywhere outside Gangnam — including Gyeonggi Province and Incheon — has gone up."

Jang said the rental market presented an even grimmer picture. "The jeonse and monthly rent situation is even more serious," he said. "Prices are surging for villas, officetels and single-room units, and ordinary people's suffering has reached its peak."

Jang said Lee was treating signs of market distress as achievements. "President Lee speaks as though a surge in listings, a sharp drop in transactions, rising delinquency rates and more foreclosure auctions are accomplishments," he said. "Listings surged because tax bombs left people with no choice but to sell." He added that loan restrictions had choked off transactions, while soaring interest rates had pushed up delinquency rates and driven more properties into foreclosure.

Jang was particularly sharp in his closing remarks. "Every single one of these is a source of pain for the people, yet President Lee treats them as bragging rights — this is nothing short of 'real estate sadism,'" he said. "This administration will collapse at a remarkably fast pace."

Earlier Wednesday, Lee had shared a news article headlined "Is the president right that home prices have fallen? Seoul has risen for 90 consecutive weeks" and labeled it "fake news."

The article argued that Lee's remarks were accurate only for Gangnam. Lee countered that he had never claimed home prices across all of Seoul were in freefall.

On the criticism that his comments applied only to Gangnam, Lee said the charge implied his remarks about other areas were wrong — but that he had only ever been referring to Seoul's key districts: Gangnam, Seocho and Songpa. "I never said home prices across all of Seoul were collapsing, so the claim that I was only right about Gangnam is also fake news," he said.


yeonjoo7@heraldcorp.com