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President Roh “Will Bring Down Housing Prices At Any Cost”

President Roh “Will Bring Down Housing Prices At Any Cost”

Posted November. 05, 2004 22:55,   

한국어

President Roh Moo-hyun commented on November 5 regarding the matter of investigation into unlawful acts or human rights violations done in the past by government institutions, emphasizing that it is his intention to “have whatever government bodies, may they be the National Intelligence Service (NIS) or the police, to ask for forgiveness of the people for any embarrassing matters done in the past while I’m in office, so that they will be forgiven.”

The president went on the air through the MBC radio program “Women’s Era,” and said, “Without gaining ethical confidence, people will no longer support the nation, which will make it difficult for the whole nation to achieve anything.”

Using the NIS as an example, he said, “Nowadays, when I say that the responsibility of terror prevention will be best served by the NIS, the National Assembly, and civic groups, it presents a strong objection. This shows how little they trust the NIS because it has a notorious history of snooping on our citizens as well as repressing and even torturing. Changing its name from the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) to the Agency for National Security Planning (NSP) to the National Intelligence Service (NIS) did little to retain its credit.”

Regarding measures on real estate prices, “I would make a total renovation of the system to bring land and housing prices under control, no matter what it takes,” said President Roh, stressing, “There will be limit as to places like Seoul, but speculative real estate activities will be completely prevented in order to keep land and housing prices down, which soar regardless of supply and demand.”

Regarding the recession, he said, “We are facing not an ordinary recession, but a grave one with especially deep, entrenched problems,” and added his analysis, saying “This recession, which was brought on by extreme household debt, will turn around after we get over this critical point, so we can endure and overcome it. The overall health of our economy is quite sound.”



Jung-Hun Kim jnghn@donga.com