South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index triggered its circuit breaker 11 times this year, with nine of those halts occurring in the five-month span following local elections, according to data cited by Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon in a report from Asiae.
Mayor Oh criticized the administration on his Facebook page, arguing that government policies drove retail investors into high-risk debt-based products and worsened the market drop. The government turned the market into a giant gambling den where it raised the stakes using the National Pension Service as seed money and paved the way to inflate those stakes with high-risk leveraged products,
Oh wrote in the post.
The Seoul mayor pointed directly to a May 28 policy decision that increased the National Pension Service’s target allocation for domestic stocks from 14.9% to 20.8%, just six days prior to local elections. He stated that the move forced the public retirement fund to act as a prop for a falling market.
Middle-aged citizens liquidated retirement funds and younger adults pooled marriage and housing deposits to enter the stock market, drawn in by what Oh characterized as a government-fostered illusion of rising prices. He argued that the combination of pension fund intervention and debt-based options created severe vulnerability when the market corrected.
Oh called on President Lee Jae-myung to apologize directly to individual investors who engaged in heavy borrowing to buy stocks and to release practical stabilization measures. He also demanded a full investigation into who authorized the pension fund adjustments and the introduction of debt-based financial products.
The President is not in a position to leisurely answer questions on YouTube channels about why he uses social media so often or how well he sleeps,
Oh stated, urging the administration to halt communication via social media in favor of concrete rescue plans.