LH Chief Urges Tighter Mortgage Caps, Pushing Homeownership Further Out of Reach for Young Koreans

* Editor's note: AI PRISM (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an artificial intelligence-based personalized news recommendation and summary service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six news items tailored to each reader type.

1. "Will Homeownership Slip Further Away for Young People Who Struggle to Raise Funds?"

Key points: Lee Sung-hoon, president of LH, argued that mortgage limits on homes priced at 1.5 billion won or less are excessive and need to be cut further, spreading concern that the barrier to buying a first home could rise even higher for young people. Of the 39.5984 trillion won in Seoul home purchases by buyers in their 30s from February to July this year, 15.8724 trillion won, or 40.1%, came from loans by financial institutions, far above the 25.1% for those in their 40s and 14.5% for those in their 50s. Under the current system, buying a 1 billion won home as a first-time purchase already requires at least 400 million won of a buyer's own money, excluding taxes and related costs, and analysts say a further reduction in limits would inevitably increase reliance on credit loans and non-bank lenders. Some also argue that the gap in homebuying ability could widen depending on whether a buyer works for a large company, pointing to in-house loan programs such as Samsung Electronics', which offers up to 500 million won at an annual rate of 1.5%.

2. "Tax Withheld Up Front From Riders and Substitute Drivers to Fall From 3.3% to 2.2%"

Key points: Starting next year, the withholding tax rate on income earned by personal service providers such as delivery riders, substitute drivers and broadcast writers will fall to 2.2% from the current 3.3%. The change eases a structure under which large amounts of tax are withheld first and refunded the following year, increasing income available for immediate use, and is also expected to reduce reliance on paid refund agency services such as SamJeomSam, which charge fees of 10% to 20% of the refund. For a single-person household earning 45 million won a year, annual withholding would fall to 990,000 won from 1.485 million won, an increase in take-home pay averaging 41,000 won a month. The National Tax Service is notifying 820,000 people, including personal service providers who did not file comprehensive income tax returns for the 2021 through 2025 tax years, of 163.5 billion won in refunds at no fee.

3. "Fine of 5% of Operating Profit if Three Die in a Year; Past Data Would Have Covered 29 Companies"

Key points: The National Assembly plenary session passed an amendment to the Occupational Safety and Health Act that imposes a fine of up to 5% of operating profit on employers when three or more workers die in industrial accidents in a single year because of violations of safety and health obligations. Since the Serious Accidents Punishment Act took effect, 29 companies, including duplicate counts, recorded three or more deaths in a year between 2022 and 2024, suggesting that a considerable number of companies could face the fines. Workers, worker representatives and honorary industrial safety inspectors can now demand a work stoppage even in situations where an industrial accident is feared, and the right of subcontracted workers to evacuate directly from a prime contractor's site has been written into law. The full amount of fines collected will go to the industrial accident compensation insurance fund and be reinvested in accident prevention programs.

4. "Data on 25,000 People Leaked at Shinhan Bank; 'Full Compensation for Losses'"

Key points: Personal and credit information related to loan applications by about 25,000 people was leaked at Shinhan Bank, and an AI agent was reportedly used in the process of stealing the data. The attacker hacked the code of M Shinhan, a mobile site for loan brokers, then randomly entered query values to extract information including customer numbers, annual incomes and calculated loan limits. Sixty-six resident registration numbers and 97 connecting information (CI) records were also leaked. Shinhan Bank said it would provide full compensation for any confirmed damages, and the Financial Supervisory Service has launched an emergency on-site inspection. Customers can check whether their information was leaked through the Shinhan Bank website or a separate query menu in the Shinhan Super SOL app.

5. "Mid-Sized Firms to Get Graduation Grace Period Even After Becoming Large Companies; Existing Benefits Kept for Five Years"

Key points: A graduation grace period will be introduced under which mid-sized companies that grow into large companies keep their mid-sized status and benefits for the first five years. The measure is intended to prevent side effects in which companies avoid growth or revert to small- and medium-sized status because support shrinks and regulations pile up as they get bigger. The government plans to run a 1 trillion won Decacorn Project from 2026 through 2035 and to support the AI transition of about 350 mid-sized manufacturing prime contractors, or 50% of the total, by 2030. Some say restoring the growth ladder could expand hiring capacity at mid-sized companies.

6. "Jensen Huang Asks Amodei, 'Why Make Such Extreme Statements?' Behind the Scenes at the White House Luncheon"

Key points: At a White House luncheon meeting, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang publicly pressed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on why he issues extreme warnings about the risks of AI models. Amodei did not back down from the position that model capabilities should be disclosed honestly to the public and that risks should not be underestimated, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg signaled opposition to new regulation. In the official setting, the heads of the AI companies refrained from airing disagreements and signed the White House superintelligence (SI) pact together, presenting a show of willingness to regulate themselves. Anthropic, which is preparing for an initial public offering, is working to improve relations with the administration, while Meta has displayed a warm relationship with the Trump administration, pointing to diverging calculations among the companies.