“This is where things collapse first.” The shocking commercial vacancy crisis spreading even to Gangnam: signs of a massive crisis that could engulf the Korean economy (Full version with Dr. Seo Dong-gi)

Dr. Seo Dong-gi argues that commercial real estate is a leading economic indicator and that spreading vacancies in Gangnam signal that a downturn has already begun, diagnosing retail properties as still heading toward the worst. He warns that, unlike the IMF crisis, the current downturn could become a structural, chronic slump in which every industry except semiconductors struggles and recovery takes a long time. As countermeasures, he identifies reducing household debt, restraining the money supply, and raising interest rates during booms. He advocates a combination of higher property holding taxes and lower transaction taxes, along with ending excessive intervention during downturns. He proposes keeping housing costs within 30% of monthly income as a safety threshold and identifies the conversion of jeonse deposit leases into monthly rentals and a narrowing gap between home prices and jeonse deposits as signs of landlords' financial collapse. Against expectations of interest rate cuts, he cites New Zealand and Japan to argue that, in a prolonged downturn, home prices can fall even as rates are cut. He explains that the redevelopment lottery of the low floor area ratio era is over, and that high-rise redevelopment can result in losses without rising home prices because owners' required contributions soar. For homes that will remain viable 30 years from now, he identifies location and a land ownership share of at least 15 pyeong as conditions, warning that the proliferation of supertall buildings leaves future generations with the burden of their deterioration into slums. All directional outlooks are the speaker's conditional judgments, not definitive predictions of short-term prices.