Minister Suh Seoung-hwan of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has loads of urgent businesses to take care of  as he takes over the ministry in the Park Geun-hye government.

 Minister Suh Seoung-hwan of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has loads of urgent business to attend to as he takes over the ministry in the Park Geun-hye government.

One of the most urgent tasks for the ministry is the refloating of the real estate market, the minister told key officials of the ministry at the Sejong City government complex in Sejong City, South Chungcheong Province, to discuss what he was instructed to do at the cabinet ministers’ meeting presided over by President Park at Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul.

The real estate market is weak at best, especially the housing market, with not many sales of residential houses coupled with the problems of the growing number of those who are “house poor” and “rent poor” around the country.

At his inaugural ceremony on March 12 at the Sejong City government complex, he said the normalization of the real estate market should be the highest priority for the ministry among the many problems to take care of in the days ahead.

The extended slowdown of the real estate market has not only hurt the economy, but also the livelihoods of the people. The ministry, in cooperation with other related ministries, should be able to come up with realistic measures to solve the crisis including housing welfare policies. He said more leasing houses should be built, many of them tailor-made to suit what the people want under a big frame of government housing policies. 

“Rather than setting up a new residential location, we should build more residential houses in the existing cities and towns by finding suitable locations to build those residential houses, making many of them leasing houses. We have to build more residential units in great demand including houses for leasing, those for the newly married, college students, single-person houses, and other types of residential houses that people want in tune with the changing times. We should back that up with government policies,” he said.

“We ought to have tailor-made municipal life revival plans, strengthening infrastructure with tailor-made strategies for each of those cities. Let’s mix city and land plans with environmental plans to create sustainable national land. We at the same time, should adopt policies to prevent unruly and excessive land development. Revival should precede development and we should intensively develop spaces taking advantage of IT and information to create a new model for scientific and effective national land management.”

“The construction industry, which has been a large foundation stone for the explosive growth of the national economy, should be revived to again become a strong pillar for economic growth in the future by strengthening its structure to regain its competitive edge in the global construction market. We have to reform the public project bidding system and treatment for professional construction people. The overseas market should be diversified to include Africa and Central and South America and boost value-added portions of the construction projects by turning them into investment-development projects and package types as well that can be exported,” Suh said.

He also urged further advancement of transportation and logistics industries in Korea to enhance their competitive power. He promised that the ministry will take measures to increase government support to taxi business operators so that all those involved including drivers, taxi owners, and passengers would be winners through win-win policies. The distances and the taxi fares will be made reasonable and the bus service will also be taken care of in such a way that bus services will be made more responsive to what the public wants as a mass transportation means.

The logistics industry will also be made advanced so that it can be more useful to economic activities in the country. The structure of the logistics industry will be simplified in such a way that all those working in the industry can live together in prosperity.