President Lee Jae-myung ordered on Friday a review of imposing "heavy holding burdens" on corporate non-business real estate.
"Why are companies holding onto real estate that they don't even need right now?" Lee said at the first plenary session of the National Economic Advisory Council held at Cheong Wa Dae. "I am convinced that Korea's industrial economic system will only function properly when we make it impossible to speculate on real estate and profit from speculative real estate operations, by whatever means necessary."
"Didn't we heavily regulate corporate non-business real estate in the past?" the president continued. "It seems to have mostly disappeared now."
Lee instructed the Policy Office to "review this as a separate agenda item."
"Review the direction of imposing heavy holding burdens on non-business real estate," he said. "We will expand from housing to the next stage of farmland, then to general real estate, so conduct a preliminary review."