President Lee: "Media Swarmed with Distorted Reports, Derailing Real Estate Speculation Controls"

President Lee Jaemyung's SNS message on the 14th
Lee: "They manipulated public opinion and pushed the nation to the brink of a dangerous abyss"

President Lee Jaemyung is entering the senior presidential secretaries' meeting held at the Blue House on the 12th. Yonhap News

On the 14th, President Lee Jaemyung lashed out, saying, "In the past, whenever the government tried to normalize the real estate market, some media outlets that should have reported the facts accurately rose up like a swarm of bees and repeatedly engaged in distorted and fabricated reporting," adding, "They colluded with real estate speculators, defended their position, and relentlessly attacked government policies, thereby derailing real estate speculation control policies for decades."

President Lee made these remarks on this day via his social networking service (SNS), sharing an article titled, "They picked a fight with me for telling people to sell multiple homes... 'Not coercion,' President Lee suddenly says on SNS." The article reported his comments from that morning, in which he said, "I only seek to normalize the real estate market, and I am not forcing anyone to sell their homes."

President Lee countered, saying, "I have never sharpened my words in a blunt way by telling people to sell their multiple homes, I have never forced anyone to sell, and I have no intention of doing so," and added, "Even while in politics, I have focused on creating objective conditions that are advantageous to voters who support me and on informing them of those conditions, but I have rarely used blunt expressions such as 'vote for me.'"

He went on to say, "Whether something is a recommendation or coercion is like two sides of the same coin, depending on the speaker and the listener," and criticized, "It is hard to accept that the media is denouncing me by saying that the president first sharpened his words telling people to sell their multiple homes and then suddenly changed his words by saying it was not coercion, based solely on different expressions used to describe the same situation."

President Lee further pointed out, "Real estate has concentrated the nation's wealth, robbed ordinary people without homes and young people of hope, and made the housing problem the biggest reason for giving up on marriage and childbirth," adding, "Because of low birth rates, the Republic of Korea is on the verge of becoming the first country in the world to disappear."

He stressed, "If, for decades, you have manipulated public opinion and pushed the country to the brink of a dangerous thirty-year abyss by engaging in civil engineering, construction, and real estate speculation, and if you have amassed that level of wealth and power, then it is time to stop."

He also criticized, "There is ample reason to listen carefully to the view that some forces and groups that are still fueling real estate speculation and driving the country into a republic of ruinous, unearned real estate income must now bear the responsibility that has been set for them."