The Korea Housing and Urban Guarantee Corp. (HUG), formerly the Korea Housing Guarantee Corp., was officially launched on July 1, in a ceremony held at its office in the Busan International Financial Center, to take charge of the projects designed to resurrect the competitive nature of the cities around the country. Korea Housing Guarantee Corp. was renamed and made to take charge of the Housing Guarantee Fund in recognition of its capacities for housing guarantees and its project financing.
In his congratulatory speech, Vice Minister Kim Kyung-hwan of the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry said the new company should do its best to manage the Urban Housing Fund by taking advantage of its know-how in housing guarantees as a top housing guarantee firm in Korea for the past 20 years. It should create a model for resurrection for cities so the reform of the fund is achieved in full.
In his speech at the launching ceremony, President Kim Sun-deok said, “we aim to protect the general public by providing various guarantee products and services for cities and residential houses as we plan to do our best to grow as a core policy implementation agency that provides a new platform for urban housing financing.”
The new company declared its Vision 2025, which outlines its management framework. Its slogan is “HUG the People.” The mission is to create an affluent world by developing residential houses, cities for the people. The vision is to be a leader in urban residential guarantee that boosts the value of the living space, with the core value being Humanism, Understanding and Growth, which is what HUG stands for.
He said some 6 billion won to 25 billion won from the fund, in addition to private investments, will boost total funds to be invested into the project to 1.2 trillion won through 2017. That will go to the City Resurgence Project, which is designed to strengthen dilapidated cities. The government included the New Town Project and the Redevelopment Project in the City Resurgence Project to give a fresh impetus to the projects designed to remodel the dilapidated cities around the country, especially old sections of the cities, which need remodeling and repairs.
The National Housing Fund will also be renamed as the National Urban Housing Fund this month and funnel 105 trillion won to the resurrection of cities. President Kim Sun-deok of HUG recalled that the government only focused on building new houses in the past 30 years, while old residential houses in cities have been inadequate to people of various age groups, and at the same time, neglecting the remodeling of old residential houses in cities.
The present government focuses on supplying tailor-made houses to suit the preferences of each different age group in the country, and the new city housing will get rid of its old policy of following government housing policies passively, instead turning active in implementing its housing policies, including housing welfare policies to rebuild cities as more competitive areas to live.
HUG signed an MOU with the Korea Residential Housing Association (led by Chairman Park Chang-min), and the Korea Housing Construction Association (led by Chairman Kim Moon-kyung) on cooperation to “live together,” by improving various systems from the point of view of customers.
HUG should work together with the government to set up the Urban Residential Housing Council to channel various voices from the housing market so they can be reflected in various systems effectively, which will then be run by HUG.
HUG will also introduce the housing guarantee products for regional housing cooperatives and operators of the social lease housing, which have been in areas that cannot be covered with housing guarantees. HUG will ease the qualifications for the builders of temporary housing in integrated financial guarantees. HUG, at the same time. has been considering ways to help business-type house leasing operators.
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