• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.138-160
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• 2009

The urban housing market in Korea, especially in Seoul and the Capital region, has been revitalized with massive urban (re)developments and expanding real estate finance after the IMF crisis. This brought about a boom of housing price during the mid-2000s, which has been virtually stabilized by strong regulation policies of the previous government. But with impacts of the recent international financial crisis together with some inherent problems, the housing market of Korea faces with a worry of collapse in relation with the financial market volatility and the serious depression of real economy, and hence the current government attempts to implement strong deregulation policies on the housing market. In this paper it is argued that this kind of volatility of urban housing market seems to be caused by strategies of capital which involve continuous massive urban (re)development, residential segregation and appropriation of monopoly rent(or capital gain), and fictitious capitalization of real estates and integration of real estate market and financial market. In these reasons, the current tendency of urban housing price shows a slow downward, which seems to give the current neoliberal government a rationale for deregulation policies to prevent the downward tendency. But this paper suggests that such a slow downward of housing price shift would have positive effects on the housing market in particular and social and economic situations in general, and hence an alternative housing policy is required to realize such positive effects.