During his state visit to Singapore, President Lee Jae Myung met with local Korean residents and, emphasizing once again his resolve to solve the real estate issue, said, “Even if you return to the home country, we will make sure you do not have to worry because of housing, so when the time comes, come back again.”

At the closing of a dinner discussion with compatriots held at a hotel in Singapore on the night of the 1st, President Lee made these remarks after some attendees mentioned the concern, expressed as ‘I want to return to Korea, but I am worried about housing prices’. He said, “Looking at Singapore, I think about this a lot: real estate speculation in the Republic of Korea is a chronic problem,” adding, “Must people turn the space where they live into a means of making money? I even wrote about this on Twitter before I came.”

Earlier, immediately after arriving in Singapore that day, President Lee wrote on X, “Selling and buying homes is a personal freedom, but whether that becomes a gain or a loss is decided by the government.”

During the discussion, he said, “Can you blame people who saved up and bought homes as a way to secure housing? If it makes money, you buy, and if it does not, even if you implore people to buy, they will not. Is that not the principle of capitalism?” He continued, “We created a society where buying a home yields profits. But if buying a home turns out to be of no usemaybe a bit is left, but after this and that, nothing remainsthen who would buy?” He stated, “It is not those who speculated who are at fault; it is the politicians and the government that created the system that are at fault.”

He went on, “We must not repeat such mistakes,” adding, “Is it not that the people entrusted state affairs to me so that I would fix such abnormalities?”

Even during his four-day, three-night tour of Singapore·the Philippines, President Lee has kept his focus on addressing the domestic real estate issue. Just before the trip, on the 27th of last month, he put up for sale an apartment in Bundang-gu, Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, which he co-owned with First Lady Kim Hea Kyung. With President Lee moving to sell even his single home that he had owned for 29 years, this is seen as staking everything on normalizing the real estate market. It is also interpreted as concentrating the administration's ultimate policy capacity on real estate to avoid following in the footsteps of the Moon Jae-in administration, which failed to secure another term due to real estate issues.

The market and public opinion have also been roiled by President Lee's moves. According to the Korea Real Estate Board the previous day, as the decline in the home sale demand-supply index in the southeastern region of Seoul, which includes the three Gangnam districts (Seocho·Gangnam·Songpa-gu), continued for the fifth straight week, it hit the baseline of 100.0 in the fourth week of February (as of February 23). The index reaching the baseline arithmetically indicates that neither demand nor supply has the upper hand, marking the lowest level since the first week of February last year.

According to a poll conducted by Realmeter, commissioned by Energy Economy News, of 2,507 adults aged 18 and older nationwide from the 23rd to the 27th of last month and released that day, in Seoul the share rating President Lee's job performance positively fell by 6.6 percentage points from the previous survey. Regarding the decline in support in Seoul, the epicenter of the overheated real estate market, Realmeter stated, “It is interpreted as the combined effect of asset anxiety stemming from the shift toward declining real estate prices.”