In a Facebook post titled "Seoul's letter of reflection — I recommend a read," Oh wrote that "it has been exactly one year since the Lee Jae-myung government announced its Oct. 15 real estate measures, and the report card is so dismal that it is painful even to open." He added: "The government appears to have neither the courage to reflect on the past nor the will to face reality." He said, "Instead, the president and the Democratic Party are busy dodging responsibility by blaming the current housing supply cliff on the sitting mayor."
Citing the white paper "Assessment and Reflection on 20 Years of Seoul's Housing Supply Policy," released by the city on Oct. 16, Oh described it as "a confession of reflection in which Seoul's civil servants looked back on the past themselves and laid bare, as they are, the wounds left by mistaken policies."
Drawing on the white paper, he then focused his criticism on redevelopment policy under former Mayor Park Won-soon. "During Mayor Park Won-soon's tenure, 389 redevelopment zones were cancelled, and with them the chance to supply 430,000 homes disappeared," Oh said. "At the time, construction was recovering as the fallout from the financial crisis receded, and a golden age of supply was within reach." He added: "They cancelled everything — not only sites where promotion committees had been formed and union establishment approved, but even sites that had obtained project implementation approval." He noted that "159 zones, or 41% of the total, were cancelled even though their projects had progressed considerably."
Oh said the white paper was also distributed last week to the offices of lawmakers on the National Assembly's Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee, and he urged lawmakers from both parties to read it. Addressing Democratic Party lawmakers in particular, he said, "Just as Seoul has confessed and reflected on its own past mistakes, the government and the ruling party must now admit failure and correct the direction of policy." He added: "Policy without reflection repeats failure, and the price always falls on the people. Rather than devoting your time to attacking me, I hope you will first look at the lives of people crushed by housing prices."