An Interdisciplinary Assessment of South Korea's Post-2002 Real Estate Anti-Speculation Policies

Abstract

What factors fuelled the South Korean property boom since 2002, and whar (if anything) can be done to prevent a U.S.-style subprime crisis in the local real estate markers? This issue has grown even more urgent given observations of a potential bubble and burst scenario following the U.S. sub-prime crisis. This paper aims to bring together these concerns, from an interdisciplinary regulatory, economic and socio-cultural per-spective, by (1) providing a comprehensive and current overview of housing market dynamics in Korea, (2) examining South Korea's real estate regulatory policies since 2002 with-statistical evidence from the Bank of Korea (BOK), and (3) providinga brief policy implication and suggestion sectionre-garding the Korean housing marker conditions in the post-subprime crisis era.