No. 151 / Apr 19, 2021
The Korea Land & Housing Corporation (LH) is a public corporation responsible for supplying housing in South Korea. It is a necessary enterprise for citizens because it is also responsible for implementing housing supply policies and real estate-related affairs. Recently, however, there was a suspicion that about 10 billion won of land was illegally speculated in the new city of Gwangmyeong Siheung. In recent years, the failure of the government’s policy to stabilize real estate prices has caused prices to soar, making people sensitive to real estate. Ultimately, this situation was enough to provoke public outrage.
Gwangmyeong Siheung was announced as a new city on February 24, 2021. However, suspicions began when LH employees purchased 23,028 m2 of land in Gwangmyeong Siheung from April 2018 to June 2020. The most problematic thing about this is that 98% of the speculated land is farmland. They planted crops on farmland, including seedlings other than those reported in advance. Suspicions of land speculation were further raised because the seedlings could lead to a nine-fold return on investment when the landowners are compensated for land disposal for the construction of the new city. It turns out that LH employees became famous instructors and earned hundreds of millions of won in profit by giving lectures on land investment after getting ahold of this information in advance. In addition, public outrage intensified after it was revealed that they wrote a post in an anonymous community used by LH employees ridiculing their critics, and showing that they did not recognize the seriousness of the situation. While it is true that LH was the first to obtain information about real estate because it is responsible for housing supply, it is a crime to use this information to gain an unfair advantage through real estate speculation. There is debate over whether business confidence-use crimes can be applied in this case. However, there is ambiguity regarding how far to see the secret. In addition, enforcing the law requires proving the direct use of LH information, and the fact that reports on regional development have already been made ambiguous.
Former Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-yeol criticized the situation, saying, “It is a crime of ruin to steal public information and speculate in real estate.” In addition, the fact that the police raided the LH headquarters a week after the suspicions arose, and that Byun Chang-heum, the current minister of land, was also the president of LH, raised even more suspicions. In the end, the incident caused a great deal of anger among young people suffering from housing problems. In light of this, politicians need to immediately revise the anti-reoccurrence law.
By Yu Woo Sang, AG Cub Reporter
tom6070@ajou.ac.kr
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