Tenant Yoon Hee-sook "Broke my spine and ran around with Huscidin"

Amid a surge in jeonse fraud cases across the country, former People Power Party lawmaker Yoon Hee-sook criticized the opposition party, stating that the main culprits of policy failures need to reflect.

On the 25th, Yoon posted on her Facebook, saying, "Only after three young lives, as precious as they are, were lost did the ruling and opposition parties start to come up with countermeasures." She pointed out, "The Democratic Party and the Justice Party are raising their voices as if they alone stand with the victims, demanding compensation for the deposits. However, looking at those raising their voices now, they are all the ones who proposed the Lease Protection Act three years ago and cheered as it was passed like a guerrilla war."

Former People Power Party lawmaker Yoon Hee-sook is speaking out against the Lease Protection Act at the National Assembly plenary session in July 2020. Photo by Yonhap News Agency

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Yoon identified the main culprits of the jeonse fraud as the Lease Protection Act and subsequent loan policies. She said, "In fact, jeonse prices skyrocketed right after the Lease Protection Act was passed in 2020." She added, "To appease public sentiment, jeonse loans?which later became a hotbed for gap investments?increased from 100 trillion won in 2019 to over 200 trillion won in just two years. Therefore, it is reasonable to argue that the Lease Protection Act and the loan policies that followed are the main culprits of this crisis."

She continued, "They conveniently omit the fact that they ruined the once stable jeonse market and instead claim that jeonse prices rose due to low interest rates and then plummeted again as rates increased, blaming market fluctuations." She criticized, "Without studying how the market operates and ignoring legislative procedures, they created faulty laws and tried to patch things up with inadequate measures, resulting in this crisis."

Yoon raised her voice against the opposition, saying, "Providing the causes of jeonse fraud and then calling for victim support is no different from Nolbu's mindset of breaking a swallow's leg and then fixing it. It's like breaking the backs of young people and then running around with a topical antiseptic."

Amid the recent deaths of three victims of jeonse fraud in Incheon, on the morning of the 18th, a banner informing about the fraud was hung on the main entrance door of the apartment of the jeonse fraud victims in Michuhol-gu, Incheon. Photo by Yonhap News

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Meanwhile, Yoon made a name for herself with a '5-minute debate' on the Lease Protection Act at the National Assembly plenary session in July 2020. Starting her remarks with "I am a tenant," Yoon criticized the act, saying, "The rental market is very complex, and landlords and tenants must coexist. If you side with tenants to the detriment of landlords, landlords will raise prices or leave the market."

She added, "When making laws that affect the lives of 10 million people in our country, we must at least check what problems we might have overlooked. That is what the committee's detailed review process is for." She questioned, "With what kind of audacity and arrogance can you skip this review and just pass such a law?"

Yoon said, "Those who made this law and the Democratic Party, which proceeded without this detailed review process, will be remembered for a long, long time." She concluded, "They will be remembered for a long time in the history of jeonse, real estate policy, and the lives of our people in Korea."

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