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| Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon speaks during a press session with foreign media correspondents at the press club in Seoul, Tuesday. / Yonhap |
By Kim Se-jeong
Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon blamed speculators for soaring housing prices in the capital, arguing Monday that the central government should impose higher taxes on property speculation and allocate extra money to build more public housing.
"Property development allowed some people to get extremely rich while others became extremely poor," Park said during a meeting with journalists. "Something is wrong here. There's an underlying agreement among people that speculative financial gains from property development should be recovered for society through additional taxation.
"The money could be channeled into a common account and the government could pay for apartment buildings to be built using it. Then the administration could rent them out at below market prices to people who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford them. Similarly, the government could buy land, build factories and lease the space to local companies cheaply. This would prevent gentrification."
Gentrification is an urban phenomenon where rising property prices force residents out of their old neighborhoods.
Seoul's average housing prices have risen sharply in the past five years, and have also pushed up rents.
This is not the first time the mayor has suggested such a policy ― he first made the suggestion last month to mixed opinion.
The city government now owns almost 100,000 public housing units in the city, and the mayor has said his goal is 400,000, or 10 percent.
"If the city's holdings increase, the speculation will stop at some point," he said.
The mayor said the lack of affordable housing was one of the biggest issues facing Seoul residents. It affected young adults particularly hard because it blocked them from make any long-term life plan. Policy makers also believe the housing crisis is closely related to the falling birthrate.
Meanwhile, the three-term mayor wished five former colleagues at the city government, who recently resigned to stand in the general election in April, good luck.
Offering them advice, Park said, "What a lion does with her lion cub is to push him off a cliff and have him crawl back up. They are excellent and qualified people. They'll find their way in their new endeavor and they will do fine."
The mayor refused to comment on whether he would run in the 2021 presidential election.
Park recently visited the United States and said the trip was very successful; but many viewed it as politically motivated, laying the groundwork for the presidential election. While he was there, he delivered a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations on inter-Korean affairs and advocated a joint Summer Olympics in Seoul and Pyongyang in 2032.
He also visited the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, where the Seoul local government had its own pavilion, showcasing smart city technologies used in its governance.
Co-hosting Olympics
Park also stressed the importance of the joint hosting of the Summer Olympics between Seoul and Pyongyang in 2032.
"I believe jointly hosting the Olympics will be a chance to change the fate of the Koreas forever. This will also usher in peace in Northeast Asia. North and South should now come together to host the Olympics," Park said.
The North and South discussed jointly hosting the Olympic Games in 2018 when inter-Korean relations were good, but the discussion channel has been shut down since tensions escalated.
The mayor went further and proposed the South stop joint military exercises with the U.S. to encourage the North to come forward.
"The IOC will decide the host city next year or the year after. We desperately need a joint effort now to host the Olympics. It's important that the South encourages the North to come forward, and I would propose stopping military exercises."
Asked if developing the infrastructure in the North would be possible in the face of imposed sanctions, Park answered with a great sense of optimism.
"International affairs are changing all the time – the same for the North Korean issue. If North Korea makes positive changes to host the Olympics, this can bring about other changes. Who knows?"
The mayor has been very active in inter-Korean projects on the city level. The city exchanged a visit of taekwondo athletes during the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games and after. Last November, the city organized a regional table tennis tournament in Vladivostok, Russia, with North Korean athletes' participation.
