Defects in public housing supplied by the Korea Land & Housing Corporation (LH) rose to 11.5 per household last year, more than doubling in three years, even as the government pushes to expand public rental housing. Critics say stronger quality control must come before a uniform push for volume.
Data submitted by LH to the office of Rep. Chung Hee-yong of the People Power Party, a member of the National Assembly's Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee, showed that defects per household — combining public sale units, public rental units convertible to ownership and long-term public rental units — climbed steadily from 5.1 in 2022 to 11.5 last year, a 2.3-fold increase. The figure already stood at 8 per household in the first half of this year, raising the possibility that the full-year total will exceed last year's level.
General defects in public housing over the past five years totaled 1,439,989. By trade, window and door work accounted for 297,112 cases (20.6%), followed by wallpapering with 206,544 (14.3%), furniture installation with 174,734 (12.1%), flooring with 160,016 (11.1%), tiling with 109,683 (7.6%) and painting with 87,029 (6.0%). Those six trades made up 71.9% of all general defects.
Serious defects totaled 1,255 over the same period, with 1,004 cases, or 80%, concentrated in three types: building leaks at 449, faulty lighting fixtures at 332 and pipe leaks at 223.
The government announced on the 21st of this month that it would expand its stock of public rental housing to 2.5 million units by 2030 from the current level of about 1.94 million. Some argue that a system to reduce recurring defects is urgently needed while roughly 560,000 additional units are supplied over the next four years.
"If the government has set a supply target of 2.5 million public rental units, it must also build the quality control capacity to match," Chung said. "Rather than stopping at repairing defects reported to LH after the fact, LH should analyze the causes of recurring defects and put in place a system that improves the design and construction stages, while strengthening on-site quality control and supervision."
