Lee says housing supply disruptions since 2022 election will normalize 'soon'

President Lee Jae Myung said Sunday that housing supply would soon return to normal, acknowledging that a gap in construction permits in Seoul and the greater metropolitan area over the past three years had caused some disruptions.

Lee made the remarks on X, formerly Twitter, saying that housing construction permits and ground-breakings — which had fallen sharply for reasons he described as difficult to understand following the 2022 presidential and local elections — were now recovering in earnest.

He went on to say that the public should also pay attention to interest rates, the number of auction cases, mortgage delinquency rates, the normalization of the temporary permit gap, the pace and volume of housing and land supply, and tax normalization for the sake of equity.

The post was written as a reply to a user who had written that people who purchased pre-sale homes trusting the government should not have their loans restricted.

In response, Lee asked the user to clarify whether they were unaware that he had already instructed lenders to honor the original loan agreements for those who had already made pre-sale purchases, or whether there were still cases where the correction had not been applied. "If it is the latter, I will take steps to ensure the loans are available," he said.

In a separate post, Lee shared a news report saying that an analysis by Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Park Gyun-taek had found claims that civil servant promotions were seriously backlogged under the current administration to be inconsistent with the facts.

"Thanks to Lawmaker Park, I think the grievances of our personnel officials will ease a little," Lee wrote, adding that while government oversight and checks were important, they must be grounded in facts, and that acknowledging and encouraging genuine achievements also mattered.

Lee also welcomed the return to Busan of the Panstar Arkros, the first Korean container ship to complete a trial voyage along the Arctic route, saying the government would "steadily prepare for the era of the Arctic route on the strength of this achievement."

On Saturday night, Lee said he had ordered agencies responsible for transnational crime to physically destroy and shut down websites used for illegal sexual exploitation, gambling and other crimes that could not be legally closed or blocked because they were based overseas.