Today Korea—Reporter Kim Si-on | Oh Se-hoon, the People Power Party’s candidate for Seoul mayor, and Jung Won-oh, the Democratic Party’s candidate, traded barbs over housing policy. Oh’s camp argued that Jung’s proposal to rely on villas is a short-term measure, not a fundamental solution.
On May 5, Park Yong-chan, a spokesperson for Oh, issued a statement saying Jung had suggested that supplying villas and similar units could resolve the worsening rental crisis within two to three years.
Park added that the criticism likening the suggestion to telling people to ride bicycles and electric scooters when cars are scarce was a particularly stinging rebuke for Jung. He placed the root cause of Seoul’s escalating rental crisis on what he called the Lee Jae-myung administration’s misguided housing policies, calling them a social calamity.
By contrast, Lee Ju-hee, a spokesperson for Jung, said Oh had targeted the wrong issue. Lee argued the critique of \”villa phobia\” was not directed at residents who live in villas but at Oh’s narrow preference for apartments only.
She said Oh’s single-minded focus on apartments revealed a crippling lack of policy imagination and flexibility. Lee called it simplistic to attribute Seoul’s housing problems solely to an apartment supply shortage and said those who view homes only as tools for speculation and investment remain stuck in an outdated mindset.
Meanwhile, Oh pushed back against Jung’s accusation from the previous day (May 4)—made at a meeting with Democratic district mayoral candidates—that Oh had spread a \”villa phobia,\” calling the claim hypocritical.
In a Facebook post that same day, Oh said the clear cause of Seoul’s apartment shortage was former Mayor Park Won-soon’s cancellation of redevelopment zones. He noted that redevelopment projects typically take about 20 years but that prior initiatives had shortened that timeline to about 12 years. Oh argued that if the previous administration had not lifted redevelopment designations at 389 sites during its term, there would have been sufficient starts and completions of redevelopment and reconstruction projects during his term. He accused the Democrats of cutting the roots and then complaining the tree did not grow.
He also blamed the recent rental crunch on what he described as the Lee administration’s hurried short-term fixes—demonizing multiple-homeowners and imposing blanket restrictions across Seoul that blocked private rental housing supply.
He warned that proposals to eliminate special tax benefits for non-resident single-homeowners would further dry up private rental housing and exacerbate the rental-and-lease crisis.
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