The head of TV network MBC has purchased three apartments, with two in the name of a dancer he is having an affair with, in the new administrative city of Osong in North Cheongcheong Province, the broadcaster’s labor union said Tuesday.
Kim Jae-chul, 55, bought a flat with floor space of more than 70 square meters in the Hoban Berdium apartment complex, on Dec. 26, 2007. Another, put in the dancer’s name at the More Miraedo complex two days later, is situated some 300 meters away.
It has also been learned that they failed to sell the apartments although both parties wanted to resell them without registering ownership. The two have never occupied the properties.
“Kim and the dancer visited real estate agencies there to buy the apartments, calling each other sister and brother,” a realtor broker was quoted as saying, according to the labor union. It was Kim who requested the realtor shops to broker the rights to the apartments under construction.
However, when signing the ownership rights to the flats, the two appeared at the real estate agency together. At first, Kim intended to buy the two flats in the name of the dancer, but contracted one flat under his own name to avoid paying the heavy property taxes due from multi-home owners, according to the labor union. The street value of the three apartments is estimated at 800 million won in total.
The labor union also claimed that Kim and the dancer have jointly managed the rights to rent out the homes until recently.
“The dancer handled the rent process of the flat under the name of Kim in August, 2010, when the rights owners were allowed to move into the complex,” a real estate agent said. “But Kim signed the contract on the rent of the flat owned by him in person because the tenant rejected a the letter of attorney.”
Real estate speculation spree swept through the new administrative city at that time, when the government decided to locate the railway station for the bullet train on the line connecting Seoul and Busan and a high-tech medical complex there.
The three apartments are located within one kilometer of the city’s train station.