Minister Kim Yun-duk of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport likened supplying dwellings to stamping out bread and shared the difficulties. The remark is famous as something said in 2020 by then-Minister Kim Hyun-mee during the Moon Jae-in administration, and Minister Kim Yun-duk brought it up again after six years.
Minister Kim Yun-duk attended the full session of the Land Infrastructure and Transport Committee at the National Assembly on the 11th and held a Q&A with An Tae-jun, a lawmaker of the Democratic Party of Korea. There, An said, "Supplying dwellings requires considerable time for securing sites, approvals and permits, compensation, groundbreaking, and then completion, so isn't a certain amount of time needed for the public to feel it?"
In response, the Minister said, "We will strengthen promotion as much as possible on the supply issue," and added, "However, as everyone has said, if (supplying dwellings) were like stamping out bread, we could stamp them out all night, but please consider that it inevitably takes quite a long time for the tangible results of actual supply to become visible."
The person the Minister referred to as "someone" is former Minister Kim Hyun-mee, who served as the first Minister of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) under the Moon Jae-in administration from June 2017 to December 2020. She attended the full session of the Land Infrastructure and Transport Committee on Nov. 30, 2020. There, when then–Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Kim Kyo-heung asked about the reason for a shortage of apartment supply in connection with measures on jeonse leases, the former Minister answered that the reason apartment supply would decrease in 2021–2022 was a sharp drop in permit volumes five years earlier and the cancellation of public housing sites, adding, "If apartments were bread, I would make them even if I had to stay up all night."
The point was that it is difficult to increase supply in a short period, but the repercussions were great. Until then, the Moon administration had maintained that the supply of dwellings was sufficient, and it was the first remark acknowledging a shortage of supply.
Lawmaker Yoo Seong-min criticized on Facebook, saying, "Make apartment policy, not apartments," and added, "In the end, Antoinette met a tragic end at the guillotine." Marie Antoinette is famous for the remark during the French Revolution, "If there is no bread, let them eat cake (brioche)." The remark came to symbolize the indifferent words of a privileged class oblivious to ordinary people's suffering, and Yoo used it to criticize the former Minister.