Oh Se-hoon criticizes Lee's 'leveling' remark, calls on government to release Yongsan Park poll results

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon publicly criticized President Lee Jae Myung on Monday over remarks Lee made at a press conference Saturday, in which Lee described rising home prices on the outskirts of Seoul as "a kind of leveling process."

Oh made the comments in response to reporters' questions at a housing policy achievements forum held Monday morning at Seoul City Hall in Jung-gu.

"The underlying thinking behind that expression is deeply worrying," Oh said. He said the real driver of rising prices in outer districts was the disappearance of the jeonse market. "People are scrambling to buy even a peripheral apartment because jeonse has vanished," he said. "The true backdrop is the acute pain of jeonse supply drying up while deposits and monthly rents keep climbing."

Oh said Lee had responded to a moment that called for identifying the causes of the problem and offering solutions by instead declaring that government policy was without fault. "That was an answer that would leave many citizens feeling frustrated and in pain," he said.

Oh also criticized Lee's response at the press conference to a reporter who asked whether he still believed jeonse should be abolished. Lee had shot back, "When did I ever say it should disappear?" Oh said that even if a reporter's framing differed from a president's own view, the right thing to do was to pivot and explain that view clearly. "That was not the response citizens were hoping to see," he said.

On the proposal — which has put Seoul City Hall at odds with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport — to build housing on the Yongsan Park site, Oh said the ministry was reviewing alternative sites but that candidates were difficult to disclose publicly. He reiterated Seoul's opposition, citing a city survey in which 63 percent of respondents opposed the plan and 47 percent said they were "strongly opposed."

"As far as I know, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport also said it would conduct a public survey on Yongsan Park," Oh said. "Releasing those results is the right thing to do. If the government ignores public opinion and stubbornly pushes to convert protected green space into a residential development site, it will face enormous public resistance."

Oh also rebuffed the ruling party's claim that the mass cancellation of redevelopment zones under a previous Seoul mayor had been unavoidable, calling it "an obvious attempt to muddy the waters and shift the blame."

"If you look at how those zone cancellations were carried out, they were designed to look like voluntary withdrawals," he said. "Conflict is inevitable in any association or promotion committee, but the Seoul city government of that era actively stoked and incited those conflicts."

"To now say the process was voluntary and therefore reflected what residents wanted goes beyond a lack of conscience — it is outright deception," Oh said. He added that he had held back from speaking out in order to protect the civil servants involved at the time, but that the ruling party was now "shamelessly turning around and attacking me."

Oh acknowledged that some redevelopment zones had been dedesignated during his own tenure in cases where residents faced losses, but drew a clear distinction. "The basic position of Seoul City Hall is to support the progress of redevelopment projects — including through systems like the conflict mediation officer," he said.