Oh Se-hoon: “Government must admit failure in real estate policy and correct course”

[Financial News] Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, citing a housing policy white paper recently published by the city, urged the government and ruling party to “admit their failure and correct the course of their policies.”
Mayor Oh said on social media (SNS) on the 18th, “It has been exactly a year since the Lee Jae-myung government announced its October 15 real estate measures, and the report card is so dismal that it is painful even to open it.”
He criticized the government, saying, “It seems to have neither the courage to reflect on the past nor the will to face reality.” He added, “Instead, the president and the Democratic Party are busy evading responsibility by blaming the incumbent mayor for the current cliff in housing supply.”
He then introduced a white paper Seoul released on the 16th, titled “A 20-Year Assessment and Reflection on Seoul’s Housing Supply Policy,” describing it as “a candid and remorseful confession in which Seoul city officials themselves looked back at the past and laid bare the wounds left by misguided policies.”
He claimed, “During Mayor Park Won-soon’s tenure, 389 redevelopment districts were canceled, eliminating opportunities to supply 430,000 housing units. At the time, the construction industry was recovering from the effects of the financial crisis, and a golden age of housing supply was just around the corner.” He added, “Everything was canceled—not only areas where project committees had already been formed and approval had been granted to establish associations, but even areas that had received project implementation approval.” He noted, “As many as 159 areas, or 41% of the total, were canceled despite their projects having made considerable progress.”
He also criticized the cancellation process, saying, “There were cases in which the process was rushed under the guise of a resident opinion survey, even using the names of the deceased; cases in which districts were canceled based on arbitrary interpretations of ordinances; and cases in which they were canceled by administrative fiat despite opposition from residents and district governments.”
He also claimed, “At the root of this was a hostile view that redevelopment and reconstruction were forms of speculation,” adding, “The mistaken decisions made 15 years ago have come back as the ‘deletion’ of countless homes that should have been supplied by now.”
Addressing Democratic Party lawmakers in particular, he stressed, “Just as the Seoul city government has itself confessed to and reflected on past mistakes, the government and ruling party must now admit their failure and correct the course of their policies.”
He continued, “Policies without reflection repeat failures, and the public always pays the price,” and said, “Instead of devoting your time to attacking me, please look first at the lives of people weighed down by housing prices.”

[email protected] Jeong Gyeong-su Reporter