![\"Seoul](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/news-p.v1.20260717.28afb8356e4e4c29b3a294c2f8109c37_P1.jpg\"\/ "\\"Seoul")
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon. Yonhap News<\/p>\nSeoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon. Yonhap News<\/p>\n
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon on the 17th labeled the stock market a “gambling den,” pointing to sharp swings driven by single-stock leveraged exchange-traded funds (ETFs), while strongly criticizing the “aggressive debt relief” policy ordered by President Lee Jae-myung. He also called for a full audit of the derivatives approval process.<\/p>\n
In a Facebook post that day, Oh said, “There is one thing the Lee Jae-myung administration is teaching young people: that the harder you work honestly, the more you lose.” He added, “It is a society where only young people who honestly repay their debts end up as fools.” He also sharply criticized the president’s “aggressive debt relief policy,” calling it “a government that encourages young people to slack off.”<\/p>\n
In particular, on the leveraged ETF issue recently cited as a major cause of volatility in the domestic stock market, Oh urged authorities to come up with countermeasures, saying, “There is no 9\/11 terror attack, no COVID, yet the capital market is degenerating into a gambling den.” He said, “This year, the KOSPI sidecar has been triggered 37 times. It has already surpassed the total of 26 recorded in 2008 during the global financial crisis.” He criticized the situation as “the result of approving single-stock leveraged derivatives while knowing their dangers, and standing idly by until retail investors’ assets vaporized.”<\/p>\n
He further pointed out, “In a society where the ladder of saving up wages to buy a home has been severed, the capital market was the last bastion where young people could dream of climbing the social ladder, but that bastion is now operating as a cruel trap.”<\/p>\n
He went on, “Only after the situation reached this point did the government come up with a belated measure raising the basic deposit for single-stock leveraged ETFs to 30 million won.” He assessed it as “hastily fixing a bar that should have been locked long ago, only after young people had all been driven to the brink of bankruptcy.”<\/p>\n
He also said, “In the midst of all this, President Lee Jae-myung has once again pushed for the forgiveness of long-term overdue debts, snapping back at voices worried about moral hazard as ‘irresponsible incitement.'” He added, “On one side they drive young people into a gambling den, and on the other they grandstand on debt relief.”<\/p>\n
Oh again pointed out, “The tragedy of the capital market is ultimately becoming a domino bomb spreading to the real estate market.” He said, “The price of the collapse of the gambling den ultimately leads to a surge in housing prices, foreshadowing a cruel outcome that will wholly destroy even young people’s housing stability.”<\/p>\n
Oh added, “A country that takes away young people’s opportunities for sound asset formation has no future.” He said, “A full audit of the approval process for risky derivatives is needed. A fundamental prescription to restore the health of the capital market must be presented.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon. Yonhap News Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon on the 17th labeled the stock market a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[38253,9885,22912,146,7586,1149,112,14469,19759],"class_list":["post-89488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-seoul","tag-capital-market","tag-debt-relief","tag-kospi-sidecar","tag-lee-jae-myung","tag-leveraged-etf","tag-oh-se-hoon","tag-seoul","tag-seoul-mayor","tag-single-stock-derivatives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}