Why Did Lee Jae-myung Say "No Rental Apartments" During His Time as Seongnam Mayor?

Lee Jae-myung, Democratic Party of Korea presidential candidate Photo by Yonhap News

[Asia Economy (Seongnam) = Reporter Lee Young-gyu] Lee Jae-myung, the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party of Korea, is facing intense criticism from some media outlets for his 2013 statement during his tenure as mayor of Seongnam that "rental apartments are a loss, so we do not build them."

However, Seongnam City explains that if one properly understands the financial situation of Seongnam City when Lee was mayor, it becomes clear why such a statement was made and what intentions were behind it.

According to Seongnam City on the 3rd, Lee declared a moratorium (debt payment deferral) just 12 days after taking office as mayor in July 2010. Then, three years later, in December 2013, he officially announced that the city had overcome its financial difficulties and was graduating from the moratorium.

The controversial statement by Lee came in January 2013, 12 months before the official announcement of graduating from the moratorium.

At that time, Lee made the statement with the intention that it was inappropriate for the newly established "Seongnam Urban Development Corporation" (a public institution under Seongnam City recently involved in issues such as the Daejang-dong development project) to take on debt to promote rental apartment projects, given that Seongnam City was about to graduate from the moratorium after enduring "the pain of Seongnam citizens" to repay enormous debts over three years.

A Seongnam City official explained, "At that time, Mayor Lee Jae-myung did his best to overcome the severe financial crisis of Seongnam City, which had emerged during the tenure of the mayor from the predecessor of the People Power Party, the Grand National Party. He expressed that it was difficult under the circumstances to build rental apartments by incurring debt through the newly established Seongnam Urban Development Corporation while the moratorium had not yet ended."

Park Chan-dae, spokesperson for the Democratic Party’s 20th presidential candidate, also released a statement on the 3rd, asserting, "Candidate Lee Jae-myung has thought more deeply than anyone else about housing issues for the middle class and ordinary people and improving their quality of life, and I can confidently say he has done so many times more than Representative Kim Eun-hye, who is criticizing Lee’s remarks."

He added, "The construction of rental housing is fundamentally the responsibility of the state, and Candidate Lee will steadfastly promote 30-year long-term rental basic housing to do his best for the housing stability of ordinary people."

Meanwhile, Kim Eun-hye, a People Power Party lawmaker who criticized Lee Jae-myung’s past remarks as mayor of Seongnam, is known to have opposed the construction of public housing (for youth and newlyweds) in her constituency, Seohyeon-dong, at a "Seohyeon-dong 110 Development Resident Meeting" held by the Korea Land and Housing Corporation (LH) Gyeonggi Regional Headquarters in June 2020, ultimately causing the project to be canceled.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.