"An End to Long-Established Irregular Real Estate Practices" President Moon Opts to Break Through the Problem Instead of Apologizing

[경향신문]

Struggling: President Moon Jae-in puts on his mask after making a comment during a meeting with his senior secretaries and aides at Cheongwadae on March 15. Cheongwadae press photographers

On March 15, President Moon Jae-in said, “I will aggressively take on the task of eradicating long-established irregular practices in the real estate market and establishing order for transparent and fair real estate transactions as a key state task,” and explained that this was realizing the “candlelight spirit,” which gave birth to the incumbent government.

This day, in a meeting with his senior secretaries and aides at Cheongwadae, President Moon said, “We have worked to get rid of deeply rooted irregularities in several areas, but we didn’t dare to remove the bad practices in real estate. We simply focused on stabilizing the real estate market and responded to the situations that occurred.” The president explained that after the public came to know about the alleged real estate speculation by some employees at the Korea Land and Housing Corporation (LH), “The people are demanding more than just a response to the incident. They are asking the state to uncover the fundamental problem and provide a fundamental solution.” He described the public demand as one “to eradicate the long-established irregular practices in real estate, which have aggravated the inequality in assets with unearned income from real estate and have become the root of unfairness in our society.”

The president described the latest speculation by LH employees as a “long-established irregularity,” which had continued from before the incumbent government.

President Moon emphasized his determination to end real estate speculation and even mentioned the “candlelight spirit,” which some experts argue ironically shows the political situation he is in--cornered. He gave a series of instructions on the LH case, ordering a thorough investigation and inspection and measures to prevent recurrence, and even accepted the resignation of Byeon Chang-heum, the minister of land, infrastructure and transport, but he failed to recover public support, which has turned its back to the president. The entire ruling party has been shaken by the LH case, which is even threatening the real estate measures that the government ambitiously announced on February 4 to stabilize the real estate market. The case threatens to turn the president into a lame duck, which is why he repeated the slogans from his early days in office--the eradication of long-established irregularities and the candlelight spirit. A key official in Cheongwadae explained that the president’s words were “a message to identify whether the problem was just the wrongdoing of an individual or a structural problem and to provide a fundamental solution.” However, the “eradication of long-established bad practices” was an expression used by the incumbent government to attack previous governments, so opposition is expected from the conservative opposition party.

The LH incident was a highly explosive issue for it involved both fairness and real estate, the ruling party’s Achilles’ heel. This is why the president made a series of unusually strong comments. Yet the public is turning away faster due to the ruling party’s response, including the poor investigation by the government’s joint investigation team and efforts to distract the public by suggesting an investigation by an independent prosecutor and an investigation of a wider range of public officials. On top of this, the president’s desperate decision to keep Minister Byeon in office with a deadline and the president’s emotional response to the controversy over his private residence in Yangsan further fueled the opposition party’s attacks.

According to the results of a survey (of 2,510 adults aged 18 and older nationwide, 95% confidence interval, ±2.0% margin of error) conducted by Realmeter and YTN on March 8-12 and released this day, President Moon’s approval rating fell 2.4% from the previous week to 37.7%. His approval rating fell below 40% after five weeks. Also 57.9% of the respondents answered, “It is appropriate for the government to cancel designating additional sites for the third phase new town in Gwangmyeong and Siheung.” This day, President Moon said, “No matter what happens, we cannot let people who don’t own homes and young people who desperately want the supply of housing to suffer damages,” and repeatedly expressed his determination to push ahead with the February 4 measures as planned, but the survey results showed that the drive to promote such policies has significantly weakened.

A ruling party official said, “Since the situation itself is so bad, turning the public opinion around is beyond our capacity,” and added, “Right now, we are concentrating on the police investigation and improvements to the system, but when the details of the real estate speculation are somewhat identified, the president will probably consider an apology to the nation.”