It has been revealed that Choi Young-do, the president of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, purchased farmland through his wife, who falsely registered as a resident of the area where the purchase was made. It’s extremely disappointing that another high-ranking official has been caught up in real estate problems just a short time after Lee Hun-jai was forced to resign as finance minister due to suspicions of real estate speculation.
According to Choi’s property declaration, his wife switched her residency registration in 1982 from Seoul's Apgujeong-dong, where she lived, to Yongin, where she proceeded to purchase farmland. She never lived in the area, and 10 days after making the purchase, she re-registered as a Seoul resident. According to the Agricultural Reform Law at the time, one could purchase farmland only if one resided on agricultural land to start with.
Choi, a refugee from North Korea, explained that he wanted to purchase only hillside property in order to build an ancestral grave, but the landowner wanted to sell his farmland with the hillside. He did not make the purchase out of speculative concerns, he said. That being said, the expedient purchase of the farmland was not on the straight and narrow.
One cannot unilaterally criticize the ownership of real estate by high officials. During the era of high growth when real estate prices skyrocketed on a daily basis, one cannot deny that there was a social desire to purchase land either to increase ones property or to prepare for retirement. If you had money at the time, it was hard not to get caught up in the trend. Choi explained that he had donated to the nation the earthenware he had spent two thirds of his money made as a lawyer collecting over 20 years in order to prevent it from leaving Korea. If he had plotted to increase his holdings through real estate speculation, he would never have done such a thing.
Real estate speculation and the windfalls that come from it, however, shake social justice and cause serious losses that leave the common people in pain. This is why we must hold high officials to a particularly high standard. The president of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea is a position that demands a character of particularly high moral standing. That the president of the commission is under suspicion of having purchased property on several occasions through false registration is not something that can be taken lightly.
The Hankyoreh, 19 March 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (MRT)]
[Editorial] NHRCK President’s Excessive Real Estate Possession |
