Korea's ‘Overnight Beggars'

Skyrocketing real estate prices could cost the Democratic Party the presidency in next year’s elections

- Sam Kim, with Jiyeun Lee

Grasping her mobile phone, Jang Mi-kyung flicks past South Korea’s latest news on Covid-19 infections and social distancing restrictions and begins anxiously scrolling through the real estate listings. The 48-year-old private tutor has spent the past few years hunting for an apartment in Seoul so she, her architect husband, and their two teenage daughters can move out of their cramped rental. Her frustration at being priced out of one of the world’s froth iest real estate markets has crystallized into seething anger directed at the president she helped vote into office four years ago. “I’m nothing but the butt of a joke for believing in him and his government’s promise to cool home prices,” she says. “It feels like being stabbed in the back.”

Jang’s sentiments are shared by millions of middle- class Koreans. In a Gallup Korea survey released on July 23, President Moon Jae-in’s real estate policies were cited as a top irritant among the 51% of respondents who disapproved of him. His failure to tame the forces that have bid up the average price of an apartment in Seoul by 90% since he took office in May 2017 played a role in the drubbing his Democratic Party suffered in mayoral elections in Seoul and Busan this spring.