Chung accuses Mayor Park of early electioneering

Park Won-soon

By Jun Ji-hye

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon and Chung Mong-joon, a Saenuri Party lawmaker, clashed Thursday after the former announced a plan to build 80,000 housing units for people with low incomes.

The seven-term lawmaker is a frontrunner among ruling party hopefuls ahead of a primary to select a candidate to confront the sitting mayor, a member of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP), in the June 4 local elections.

The war of words began after the Seoul Metropolitan Government announced a plan the previous day to provide the people with a total of 80,000 long-term lease apartments from 2015 to 2018 in stages. It has previously supplied such housing units at lower-than-market prices to poor households.

“We will propose every alternative to resolve concern among the public over housing issues such as high prices,” Park said.

Chung said Park’s announcement “in this sensitive period” is obviously aimed at attracting voters, adding it could be a violation of the Election Law.

“Park has so far focused on creating various cooperatives in the city. We wonder why he is taking care of housing problems at this stage,” said Chung in a statement.

Chung, a son of the late Hyundai Group founder Chung Ju-yung, said such behavior could run contrary to the law that bans local government heads from promoting policies 180 days before elections are held.

“Park should stop announcing rosy plans to attract voters in the election,” said Chung. “If he continues to do so, we will take all possible measures, including legal action.”

In response, Kwon Oh-jung, in charge of political affairs at the city government, said the announcement was not a violation of the law.

“It was not an abrupt announcement. We checked in advance whether it would be against the law and concluded it was not,” said Kwon.

The central government recently announced measures to tackle housing problems, he said.

“We just revealed detailed plans following that announcement. As long as we did not propagate Park’s achievements in the statement and did not invite any number of constituents, the announcement was not against the law,” he said.