President Kim Hak-kyu of Korea Appraisal Board (KAB), KAB executives and staff members participate in a ceremony to declare a new vision, calling for social values to grow with people thru sharing. (Photo: KAB)

CEO Kim Hak-kyu of Korea Appraisal Board (KAB) declared a new vision by calling for social values to grow with the people thru sharing.

The new vision was declared in front of some 100 KAB executives and staff on Oct. 30 at the Daegu head office.

From now on, KAB will take steps to build a base for sustainable social value management, support people to enjoy comfortable lives by making good use of its special characteristics, the creation of good jobs thru reform and balanced opportunities, strengthening sharing and mutual survival that will lead the embraceable growth and the establishment of the governance system that communicates with regions and the business community, and making up the five major strategic targets of the KAB.

KAB will set up 10 large strategic tasks and 32 execution tasks. KAB also launched the Social Value Sharing Ambassador to expand sharing with the Open Social Value Management Council, which is made up of those from diverse segments of society.

The council members are made up of nine outside personnel and 10 from KAB, led by Choi Mi-hwa of the North Gyeongsang Province Female Policy Development Institute, and Professor Hwang Seong-dong, at Gyeongbuk University, among nine outsiders.

The council will play the role of acting as a communication window for the people, taking charge of promoting the sustainable social value management that the people can feel physically.

In the meantime, the Social Value Sharing Ambassador made up of college students is to play a role of being a “connecting point” for communication with people thru participation in social value for public relations.

CEO Kim said KAB had its operational results last year, having been selected as the top company in the creation of jobs thru efforts to uphold social value by creating jobs. “We got to do our best to create something that the people can feel great by creating social value system that we can grow with the people,” he said.

Via the currency crisis and opening the real estate market to foreigners, foreign real estate companies have made inroads into Korea’s real estate market and have secured a strategic foothold.

They have already gone into operation as multinational corporations having ample funds and the worldwide information network system.

Armed with deep pockets, they are rushing to purchase local properties put up for sale at cheap prices by businesses suffering from a severe cash crunch. Their entry into Korea’s real estate market will be accelerated.

What is serious, most of them are appraisal-based companies.

In addition, it has become known that other foreign real estate companies intend to move forward into Korea’s real estate market. These foreign companies are global providers delivering comprehensive consulting, competition, transaction and investment management services.

Since the currency crisis, regulations concerning real estate transactions are widely being relaxed and even completely abolished.

The government intends to attract more foreign capital into the real estate market to fundamentally by opening the real estate market to foreign investors and abolishing regulations that discriminate against them. The virtual actions are taken for the purpose of boosting real estate market.

As for appraisal market, deregulation measures such as the abolition of taking up two jobs, brokerage business and appraisal business, at the same time, the abolition of compulsory affiliation to Korean Association of Property Appraisers (KAPA), and permitting plural associations of appraisers.

This chain of deregulation measures is intended to intensify self-regulating of appraisal bodies.

In addition, the government relaxed restrictions on business that were classified by scales and increased the number of successful applicants for the purpose of activating market competitions.