Jang Dong-hyuk, leader of the People Power Party, criticized the government, saying, "The Lee Jae-myung administration and the Democratic Party tried to paint the whole country blue, and now even the stock market has turned pale blue."
"Black Tuesday, Black Wednesday—I worry this will turn into Black Everyday," Jang said at a Supreme Council meeting held at the National Assembly in Yeouido, Seoul, on the 9th.
"Yesterday, sell-side sidecars were triggered on both the KOSPI and KOSDAQ, and both indexes plunged more than 5%," Jang said. "The Wall Street Journal warned that the Korean stock market is becoming a Squid Game, saying that when the party ends, most of the losses fall on retail investors."
"In the end, the biggest victims are the retail investors who trusted the Lee Jae-myung government's words and turned to debt-financed investing," he said. "President Lee Jae-myung bragged every time stock prices rose. He even mocked people, saying they rode inverse and double-inverse products and fell into ruin, but now he insists he never said such things."
"The main culprit that turned our stock market into a gambling den is single-stock leveraged exchange-traded funds (ETFs)," Jang said. "Many experts warned of the risks from the very beginning."
"Given the characteristics of our stock market, you don't need to be an expert to know that money would pour into semiconductors and volatility would surge," he said. "Yet ahead of the local elections, presidential chief of staff Kim Yong-beom pushed it forward, and the Financial Services Commission immediately approved it."
"Even the National Pension Service, the retirement asset of the people, was recklessly mobilized to prop up the stock market. In the end, it was all for the election, and these are things that could not have been done without the president's instructions," Jang said. "I hear the Board of Audit and Inspection has launched an audit of the Financial Services Commission and the Financial Supervisory Service."
"What is needed is not an audit but a criminal investigation," he added. "The entire process of introducing leveraged ETFs must be thoroughly investigated, from the presidential office to the Financial Services Commission, the Financial Supervisory Service, and the securities firms."
Floor leader Jeong Jeom-sik also criticized the Lee Jae-myung government's stock market stimulus measures. "It is by no means an exaggeration to say the stock market has gone beyond a crypto frenzy and become a casino gambling den," he said. "Rather than boasting about KOSPI figures as if they were the result of their own abilities, the government should now focus on market stabilization policies that minimize excessive leveraged investing and the concentration of holdings in specific stocks, without heavy-handed market intervention."
