The People Power Party continued its criticism of President Lee Jae Myung after he visited the Korea Exchange in Yeouido, Seoul, on Friday wearing a red tie — a symbol of rising share prices — and expressed optimism about a future market recovery.
Park Sung-hoon, the PPP's chief spokesperson, said in a statement Saturday that "President Lee's irresponsible grasp of reality has reached its peak," adding that while retail investors were watching their hard-earned savings wiped out by a plunging stock market, the president had visited the Korea Exchange the previous day and offered nothing but "idle optimism" with remarks such as, "If the valley is deep, won't the mountain be high?"
"It is devastating that a president whose people are weeping blood can only talk about a rebound," Park said. "Is the Korean stock market a gambling den that swings on the president's every word? If prices go up, it's the president's achievement — and if they crash, it's just the retail investors' fate?"
Park added that while Lee had blamed the stock market's chronic undervaluation on corporate governance failures and management abuses, "the real culprits weighing down the market are anti-business legislative overreach, rigid labor regulation, and the president's own mouth, which rattles the market at every turn."
Park also said South Koreans had suffered losses running into the trillions of won from single-stock leveraged ETFs the government had rushed to market ahead of local elections, and that authorities had tightened regulations only after investors had already lost their money. "Risk verification and investor protection were an afterthought — the government flooded the market with high-risk products first, then scrambled to regulate after the damage was done," Park said.
"And who bears responsibility for suspending the national pension fund's rebalancing in violation of its own principles, deploying it to prop up the index, and evaporating 181 trillion won ($136 billion) of the people's retirement savings?" Park said. "The government pushes the policies, the people absorb the losses — the full picture of this irresponsible gamble, played with the public's wealth as the stake, is now laid bare."
Park said Lee had compounded the offense by lecturing the audience that "trust" was the cornerstone of capital markets. "He kept his mouth shut about the policy decisions that destroyed market confidence and instead offered nothing but platitudes," Park said. "If prices rise it's the president's achievement, and if they crash it's the retail investors' fate — this is the shameless face of governance that takes the credit and abandons the responsibility."
"Showing up at the exchange in a red tie and tossing out a few hopeful words will not bring back the people's vanished savings," Park said. "What the president should be doing is not playing stock-market fortune teller — it is correcting failed policies and protecting the people's assets."
Park added that the stock market was "neither a playground for the president to show off nor a propaganda stage to paint over the administration's economic report card," and called on Lee to disclose who had decided to introduce single-stock leveraged ETFs, what risk assessments had been conducted, and what steps had been taken to protect investors. "What President Lee needs right now is not hollow stock-price prophecy but deep reflection and a sense of accountability," Park said.
President Lee had opened Friday's policy forum — titled "Trusted Capital Markets: Seeking Answers on the Ground" — at the Korea Exchange by greeting attendees and joking that their expressions looked "too solemn." "Is it because share prices are falling?" he quipped.
Lee noted that "the market as a whole seems to have cooled," then gestured to the room. "I noticed today that most people are wearing red ties, so I matched mine to red as well," he said. "I will open this meeting hoping that our stock market heads upward."
bigroot@heraldcorp.com
