New Administrative City Speculation: “Impossible”

Starting from March 18, development and construction work will be heavily restricted in Cheongwon-gun, Chungbuk and nine districts of Yooseong-gu, Daejeon, which are areas adjacent to the designated new capital city.

Construction work on buildings will not be permitted, except construction work for agricultural production such as greenhouses and pepper drying places.

The Special Committee on Administrative Capital Relocation and the Ministry of Construction and Transportation announced on March 9 that they plan to prepare countermeasures against real estate speculation and execute them once the special law on the relocation of the administrative city is announced on March 18.

According to this plan, the government intends to ban real estate development and construction, except the enlarging and remodeling of retaining houses and the construction of storage areas for agricultural products, in Cheongwon-gun, Chungbuk and the nine districts of the Yooseong-gu, Daejeon which had their restrictions lifted after the Special Law on New Administrative Capital was ruled unconstitutional.

This measure will be continuous until the administration plan for the neighboring area is established.

The government has already been restricting construction work in Yeongi-gun and Gongju, Chungnam, the designated area for the administrative city, since February 25.

The government is also planning to operate a joint countermeasures headquarters starting from March 22 in order to prevent real estate speculation in the designated new administrative city and the neighboring areas (22.1 million pyeong and 60-70 million pyeong, respectively).

The countermeasure headquarters will be operated at all times with civil servants from central and local governments, and officials from the prosecutors office, police department and the National Tax Service who will inspect the manipulation of real estate speculation, gather and analyze data on land transactions, and investigate unregistered resales.

Referring to this, a member of the Ministry of Construction and Transportation said, “We are checking on the trend in land prices and the amount of transactions around the Chungcheong area since the end of last month, and will take a good look into transactions that we think may be real estate speculation.”

The Ministry of Construction and Transportation also plans to name the suspicious areas as a land transaction permitted area, an excessive speculation area, or a residence or land speculation area accordingly if there are signs of soaring prices or other suspicious manipulative speculations.

Sang-Rok Lee myzodan@donga.com