President Lee Jae-myung: "If the interest rate exceeds 60%, even the principal is void ... lenders will face criminal punishment"

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\r\n[Financial News] President Lee Jae-myung said on the 14th that "loan sharking and gambling are signs of national ruin," adding that "finance is a private business in form, but it is a quasi-public industry based on the state's power to issue currency and on monopolistic licensing, so it must fulfill its public responsibility."
\r\nThrough X (formerly Twitter), President Lee wrote that he would "secure policy finance for ordinary people and inclusive finance as quickly and as fully as possible."
\r\nPresident Lee said that "loans that exceed the legal interest rate are invalid, and if the interest rate is 60% or higher, regardless of how it is labeled, even the principal is invalid," adding that "there is no need to repay it, and lenders who provide such loans will also face criminal punishment. Unlicensed lending is also punishable."
\r\nHe also attached a document to his X post stating that a special crackdown on illegal private lending from November last year to April this year led to the arrest of a total of 1,553 people.
\r\nPresident Lee has repeatedly emphasized inclusive finance. On the 12th, he shared a media report on X about how a private bad bank did not join the government's debt relief program for low-income households, leaving affected debtors in difficulty, and said, "I did not know that this primitive predatory finance was still openly alive and tightening its grip on ordinary people." He added, "There are limits even in economic activity and corporate profit-seeking. No matter how important money is, we are neighbors living together in the same community, and too much is as bad as too little."
\r\nAt the State Council of South Korea and Emergency Economic Review Meeting held at Cheong Wa Dae on the 6th, he also praised Chief Presidential Secretary for Policy Kim Yong-beom for saying that "banks are not fully private companies but quasi-public institutions." President Lee said, "That was a very good point. I have been saying that all the time at length, but you summed it up briefly." In particular, he told the Financial Services Commission (FSC) that "so-called inclusive finance is one of the obligations of financial institutions so that ordinary people are not excluded from finance," adding that "I think we need to keep reminding them of that."
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cjk@fnnews.com Choi Jong-geun Reporter