[Anchor]

Half a year after its January 29 measures, the government has unveiled additional housing supply measures. First, it has decided to newly supply a total of 100,000 housing units, including about 27,000 units in Gangseo, Seoul, as well as Namyangju and Gwangju in Gyeonggi Province. In particular, the focus was placed on the speed of supply.

First, reporter Baegun has the report.

[Reporter]

The volume of new public housing districts in the Seoul metropolitan area released by the government today (the 13th) stands at around 27,000 units, including 21,700 units in Wabu-eup, Namyangju; 4,500 units in the Gyeonggi Gwangju Station area; and 1,000 units in Yeomchang Park, Gangseo-gu, Seoul.

The largest site, located in Namyangju near Dosim Station on the Gyeongui-Jungang Line, is a greenbelt area with a target to break ground in the first half of 2030.

Seoul's Gangnam-area greenbelts and the Yongsan Park, which were recently mentioned as candidate sites, were not included in this announcement.

The government plans to additionally announce candidate sites for another 73,000 units within this year.

[Kim Yun-deok / Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport : We will designate new public housing districts in locations with excellent accessibility such as station areas to supply more than 100,000 homes.]

Until the announcement of additional candidate sites, the government has temporarily designated greenbelt areas in Seoul and the metropolitan area adjacent to Seoul as land transaction permission zones, and greenbelts are highly likely to be included in the additional candidate sites as well.

[Kim Yun-deok / Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport : Greenbelts must be well preserved. However, the reason we are planning to build houses is because we are proceeding mainly with grade 3 and 4 areas that have already been significantly damaged, so I want to say that we are preparing for housing supply more actively....]

The government's plan is to additionally supply more than 230,000 housing units in the metropolitan area by combining the new housing site volume with the early ground-breaking of existing public housing sites and expanded supply in downtown and private sectors.

What was emphasized just as much as the supply volume in this measure is "speed."

For the 3rd-phase new towns, it took an average of 68 months from announcement to housing ground-breaking, but the plan is to simultaneously promote approvals, compensation, and land preparation to shorten the period down to 37 months.

The government stated that it will also advance the ground-breaking dates of existing public housing sites by one to two years to early-commence 89,000 units by 2030.

The government plans to hold inspection meetings presided over by the Prime Minister to manage project progress on a weekly basis to support this speed-driven campaign.

(Video by Park Hyun-cheol | Video Editing by Lee Sang-min | Graphics by Lim Chan-hyuk and Choi Jae-young)