Kim Jin-pyo says decision to lower gross real estate tax is practical presidential election

“We could not ignore a practical consideration as a political party, which is if we can win the presidential election after losing in Seoul with a big gap,” said Kim Jin-pyo, the chair of the special real estate committee of the Democratic Party of Korea, on Monday regarding the background for real estate tax system revision by the ruling party. It means that the ruling party views the real estate issue as one of the reasons for their crushing defeat at the by-elections on April 7 and revised its policy direction to win the next year’s presidential election.

“I admit that raising all real estate-related taxes at the time of supply shortage caused a much bigger tax burden even to small-sized single-home owners,” said Kim on KBS Radio regarding the real estate policies of the Moon administration. He acknowledged that the policy direction of the last four years has been wrong.

“We lost the by-election by 890,000 votes in Seoul alone,” said Kim. He added that many experts believe the gap between the two parties won’t be any more than 500,000 votes for the upcoming presidential election in March 2022. He also explained that lowering taxes was an unavoidable choice to settle the public sentiment, even though pro-Moon figures criticize the decision as tax reduction for the wealthy.

Such a decision was made by online votes, which is unusual, due to the strong opposition of pro-Moon figures at the general meeting of lawmakers on Friday. Kim said there was quite a gap between the numbers of members who voted for and against the decision. “Much more than the majority of all members voted for the decision. There was such a large gap that the leadership had to follow the voting results.”


Ji-Hyun Kim jhk85@donga.com