President Lee Jae-myung on the 24th pushed back against People Power Party lawmaker Ahn Cheol-soo's criticism of excluding multi-home owners from real estate policy work, saying, "Protecting frogs does not mean we must also protect mosquitoes."
Lee made the comment in the afternoon on his X (formerly Twitter) account, quoting a post by Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Kim Tae-seon. During the last presidential election, Kim served as Lee's aide-de-camp.
Earlier in the morning, lawmaker Ahn Cheol-soo argued, "If multi-home public officials are excluded from the real estate policy line, then public officials who hold stocks should also be excluded from capital market policy."
Ahn criticized Lee's policy to exclude multi-home public officials, calling it "an inappropriate approach that shifts policy responsibility onto some members of the public and stokes hate," and noted, "By this logic, senior public officials and working-level officials related to the stock market, such as the KOSPI, and their families should either sell all their shares before drafting policy or be allowed to hold only index-tracking products."
Ahn emphasized this was because "they could design policies favorable to the stocks they hold, the possibility that they might leak information that would be a boon to share prices cannot be ruled out, and there is room for them to reflect rules favorable to certain organizations and corporations with an eye to life after retirement."
In response, lawmaker Kim Tae-seon shared an article containing Ahn's claims and assessed, "He missed the point by a long shot."
Explaining why multi-home owners are excluded from real estate policy, Kim said it is "not to vilify multi-home owners as bad people, but to align the stabilization of the real estate market, which is in the public interest, with the interests of policy actors."
Kim added, "It is wise personnel policy and an expression of firm policy resolve to involve individuals with experience and willingness to participate in the capital market in policy design."