Oh Se-hun Slams Lee Jae-myung Government over 'Election-Driven Stock Market Gambling'
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hun fiercely denounced the Lee Jae-myung government as engaging in 'gambling with stocks for local elections' over the stock market's sharp plunge on the 8th, which saw the KOSPI fall below 5,000 and trigger a circuit breaker (a system that temporarily halts trading during sharp stock declines). In a Facebook post that day titled 'Stock gambling for local elections — stop dodging responsibility any longer,' Oh wrote, 'The dangerously reckless arrogance of the Lee Jae-myung government, believing it can move the market at will, has opened the gates of hell,' and pointed out that 'the arrogant notion of suppressing the real estate market with regulations while propping up the stock market by pumping in money is plunging people's lives into misery.'
Oh noted that citizens had staked their assets on the rally amid the mood created by the government. He said, 'The administration led the way in fostering the illusion of rising stock prices, and the people staked their assets on that illusion. Middle-aged and older investors poured in their retirement savings, while young people scraped together even their wedding and home-purchase funds to jump into the stock market.' As a result, he diagnosed, the market has become a gambling den. Oh said, 'It has become a massive gambling den where the government used the national pension as seed money to grow the table and opened the way for the stakes to be inflated with high-risk leverage products.'
Oh Se-hun, targeting the president directly, criticized, 'Mr. President, this is not the time to leisurely answer questions on your YouTube channel about why you post on SNS so often or whether you are sleeping well.' He demanded, 'You must personally apologize to the citizens who trusted the government and went so far as to make leveraged investments, and announce concrete remedial measures to prevent the spread of losses among retail investors.'
In this regard, he also raised issues of uncovering the truth and assigning responsibility. Oh said, 'Who decided to expand the national pension's investment allocation, and on what judgment? Who led the launch of high-risk leverage products, and why the rush? Everything must be disclosed so that not a shred of doubt remains.' He added, 'Those who used people's lives as an experiment for the administration's report card must be held accountable.' He also questioned whether it was a mere coincidence that the KOSPI collapsed below 5,000 just three minutes after the market opened, saying, 'Before the election, stock prices soared beyond belief, and after the election, they have plunged again and again.'
