Oh Se-hoon urges Lee Jae Myung to apologize over 'stock market gambling' with national pension funds

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon urged President Lee Jae Myung on Sunday to personally apologize over the recent stock market crash, accusing the Lee administration of expanding the national pension fund's domestic stock allocation and approving high-risk leveraged products ahead of local elections. Oh said the government, having stoked expectations of rising share prices, must now devise a plan to address retail investor losses and disclose the policy decision-making process in full.

Oh posted a message on his Facebook page titled "Stock gambling for local elections — stop evading responsibility," sharply criticizing the government's market-boosting policies.

Citing the Kospi's fall below the 5,000 mark and the triggering of a circuit breaker on Friday, Oh said, "Share prices surged to an almost unbelievable degree before the election, and have been collapsing ever since. Is all of this really just a coincidence?"

Oh pointed to Lee's longstanding emphasis, dating back to the presidential election campaign, on building wealth through the stock and capital markets rather than real estate, and took issue with the decision to expand the national pension fund's domestic stock allocation just before the local elections.

"Just six days before the local elections, the government pushed ahead with the bold move of raising the national pension fund's domestic stock target allocation from 14.9 percent to 20.8 percent," Oh said. "They turned the national pension — the fund entrusted with the people's retirement — into a prop holding up the stock market."

Oh also criticized the decision to approve the launch of high-risk leveraged products.

"What poured fuel on the fire were the high-risk leveraged products," he said. "Just one week before the local elections, on May 27, the government approved the launch of products that track twice the daily price movements of Samsung Electronics and SK hynix shares. These are products with an extremely high level of speculative risk."

Oh said the government's policies had instilled excessive investment expectations in retail investors.

"The administration led the charge in inflating the illusion of rising share prices, and the people staked their savings on that illusion," he said. "Middle-aged and older investors poured in their retirement funds, while young people threw in money they had set aside for marriage and buying a home."

He added, "Ultimately, the government used the national pension as seed money to grow the pot, then opened the door for leveraged products to inflate the stakes — turning it all into a giant gambling operation. The reckless arrogance of the Lee administration, believing it could move markets at will, ultimately opened the gates of hell."

Oh also took aim at Lee's recent launch of a YouTube talk show aimed at communicating directly with the public.

"This is not the time to leisurely answer questions about 'why you post on social media so often' or 'whether you are sleeping well,'" he said, urging the president to directly address the losses suffered by investors in the wake of the market plunge.

Oh particularly called for a full public disclosure of the process behind the decision to raise the national pension's domestic stock allocation and to approve the high-risk leveraged products.

"Disclose everything — who decided to increase the national pension's investment allocation and on what basis, who drove the approval of the high-risk leveraged products and why they were in such a rush — so that not a single question remains," Oh said.

He went on to say, "Responsibility must be demanded for this historic crime of using the people's lives as an experiment to burnish the administration's record."