Oh presses Blue House on housing supply, but ends lunch without agreement
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon urged the presidential office to ease building rules and rethink Yongsan housing plans, but the two sides left a lunch meeting without finding common ground.
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, right, greets presidential policy chief Kim Yong-beom on July 14.JOINT PRESS CORPS
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon urged the Blue House to change course on real estate policy at a lunch with presidential policy chief Kim Yong-beom on Wednesday, but the two parted without finding common ground.
Kim's office requested the meeting. The two men laid out their positions on how to get more homes built in Seoul but left the table in the same place where they started.
Oh's main request concerned semi-industrial zones, which are areas of land zoned for light manufacturing where apartments can go up only if part of the site stays industrial. A Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport guideline requires developers there to set aside as much as 50 percent of each site for industrial facilities.
“Easing that threshold to a range of 30 to 50 percent could boost housing supply,” said Oh, according to people briefed on the meeting.
Kim raised the idea first. He had said in June that the government should “shut up and build houses,” and pointed to semi-industrial land in Yeongdeungpo and Guro districts in western Seoul as candidate sites.
Oh rejected the government's plan to put 10,000 homes in the Yongsan International Business District, as announced in its Jan. 29 measures.
“Residents have to agree to it first,” he said. “Without their consent, it cannot be done.”
Rows of funeral wreaths appeared at the Yongsan construction site in protest after the Jan. 29 announcement. The city government puts the site's capacity only at a maximum of 8,000 homes, and only if the question of school places is settled.
The Yongsan project would redevelop the former rail maintenance depot behind Yongsan Station in central Seoul into a mix of international business, commercial and residential space. Planning began in 2007. The project collapsed in 2013 and sat largely abandoned until the city government published a new development concept in 2022.
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon speaks at a Seoul integrated defense meeting at the Seoul Fire Academy in Eunpyeong District, northern Seoul, on Aug. 5.JOINT PRESS CORPS
Oh saved his sharpest words for the government's supply strategy.
“If you want to supply housing, the volume from redevelopment and reconstruction has to go up,” he said. “That is what a supply plan is. Neglect it and there is no plan at all. Please make sure you pass this on to the president.”
The remark was in response to President Lee Jae Myung, who spoke dismissively of the supply effect of redevelopment and reconstruction at a public debate on real estate policy on July 23.
Oh handed Kim documents on the net increase in housing from past redevelopment projects in the greater Seoul area, and on delays in housing supply caused by permit backlogs under former Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon.
“If the government keeps suppressing demand through regulation and taxes and does not revive redevelopment, the damage will land on ordinary people who do not own homes,” Oh said.
The government's plan to release land from the greenbelt for housing also came up, and Oh made clear he opposes that route as well.
Oh spoke to reporters immediately afterward.
“I expressed deep concern about the government's recent real estate measures and set out several of the side effects I expect,” he said. “I asked that close cooperation with the city government come first when real estate policy is carried out from here on.”
BY KIM BO-REUM, HAN EUN-HWA [cho.yongjun1@joongang.co.kr]
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
