South Korean Minister of Finance Hong Nam-ki, the architect of rules aimed at protecting tenants and slowing deposit increases, has himself been forced to look for a new home as landlords react to the rules by quickly replacing tenants so they can bump up deposits.
Hong is also faced with broadening his search, as the average deposit where he lives 20 minutes from parliament has soared by one-third since his housing rules took effect in July, with the irony of his predicament setting the Internet alight.
“Worse comes to worst, he can camp by the Presidential Blue House, right?” one user wrote on a real-estate forum.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Seoul apartment prices have risen more than 50 percent since South Korean President Moon Jae-in inherited loosened mortgage rules from the previous administration three years ago.
To slow buy-to-rent demand, the Housing Lease Protection Act, led by Hong, capped increases of jeonse deposits at 5 percent and allowed tenants to extend standard two-year contracts for another two, unless landlords themselves move into the property.
Jeonse is a lump-sum returnable deposit paid instead of monthly rent.
The act led to an unprecedented shortage of jeonse housing nationwide as landlords sought to empty properties ahead of July so they could increase deposits for new tenants, expecting not to be able to raise them again for four years.
In Hong’s case, his lease ends in January, at which time his landlord is set to move into the property, said a realtor citing an industry database, echoing local media reports.
“My fellow landlords, let’s not rent out to Hong, let him suffer!” wrote a landlord on the popular real-estate forum. “Let’s make him feel what the government has done!”
For a comparable apartment with three bedrooms in Hong’s complex in Seoul’s up-market Mapo area, he faces deposits that have surged 32 percent in three months to 830 million won (US$731,310), Naver Real Estate data showed.
Hong, who has served the government for more than 30 years, had a net worth of 1.06 billion won at the end of December last year, government data showed.
Hong is one of a group of senior officials popularly blamed for failing to curb runaway home prices in Asia’s fourth-largest economy, even after more than 20 rounds of mortgage curbs and other steps during Moon’s tenure.
In that time, median Seoul apartment prices have risen more than 50 percent, KB Bank data showed.
His forced move opened a geyser of schadenfreude, with South Koreans struggling to find affordable housing mocking Hong for being a victim of his own making.
“Dear Hong, come and live in my place. I’ll give you a good deal,” one netizen said.
“Hong’s so smart. Way to go bro. Keep playing the victim and demand a bigger job from Moon,” another wrote.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS