By Yoon Ja-young
A new minister has been inaugurated to lead the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) Thursday, promising that he will focus on stabilizing housing for the middle and working classes.
The newly inaugurated Minister Kang Ho-in pledged that the government will work to meet demand for public rental apartments for the working class.
“Private rental homes supplied by businesses should also be promoted so that the middle class can reside for the long term without concern,” Kang said in a statement at his inauguration. “We should also look into how institutional investors could play an active role there.”
He added that deregulation should be used to create jobs and strengthen the country’s competitive edge.
“Regulations related with the life or safety or those aiming at technological and industrial development, such as energy efficiency rating of buildings, should be maintained,” he said, “but irrational regulations hampering free competition and creativity of businesses should be overhauled.”
He also emphasized setting up statistics infrastructure. “Just like we take an MRI to find out what the problem is, there is no better means than trustable statistics for correct diagnosis,” he said. “We would develop indicators to correctly represent the current situation, and manage those as sustainable statistics.”
Kang, who is the former chief of the Public Procurement Service, spent most of his career at the Ministry of Strategy and Finance (MOSF). As it is rumored that the second vice minister of MOLIT will also be nominated among MOSF officials, there has been criticism that the expertise of land ministry officials is being ignored.
At the parliamentary nomination hearing held Tuesday, Rep. Kang Dong-won of the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) said, “If both minister and vice minister are to be nominated from the finance ministry, how can they manage the land ministry?”
Currently, Hong Nam-ki, presidential secretary for planning, is rumored for nomination as the second vice minister, which is currently a vacant position following the resignation of former vice minister Yeo Hyeong-gu.