“Focus on pumping up prices before the election… nine circuit breakers in five months”
On Saturday, Oh criticized the government’s stock market policy through his social media accounts.
“Last Friday the Kospi broke below the 5,000 line and a circuit breaker was triggered,” he wrote. “Of the 11 circuit breakers triggered on the main bourse this year, nine were concentrated in the mere five months since the June local elections.”
Oh argued that it was no coincidence that the Kospi had surged above the 8,000 line ahead of the elections, only to fall sharply afterward.
He took particular issue with the fact that the National Pension Service’s expanded allocation to domestic equities and the approval of high-risk financial products came just before the local elections. “Six days before the election, the government sharply raised the National Pension Service’s target weighting for domestic stocks from 14.9% to 20.8%, and a week before, it allowed the launch of products that track twice the daily moves in Samsung Electronics and SK hynix shares,” Oh said.
“It has become a giant gambling table, with the government using the National Pension Service as seed money to raise the stakes and opening the way for the pot to be inflated with high-risk leveraged products,” he said.
“No time to leisurely explain why he posts on social media so often”… the president must apologize
Oh said the government’s market intervention fueled speculative sentiment among the public.
“The perilous arrogance of thinking you can suppress real estate with regulation and lift the stock market by pulling in money has opened the gates of hell,” he wrote. “Because the administration led the way in inflating the illusion of rising share prices, young people and the middle-aged were driven to pour even their retirement savings and home-buying funds into the stock market.”
Oh also called for an official apology from the president and a public explanation of the policy decision-making process. “This is not the time for the president to leisurely answer questions on a YouTube channel about ‘why he posts on social media so often’ or ‘whether he sleeps well,'” he said.
“The government must disclose in full detail who drove and rushed the expansion of the National Pension Service’s investment weighting and the launch of high-risk leveraged products, and on what judgment, and hold them accountable for a historic crime,” he demanded.
