[Choice Times=Joo-Hyun Park, CEO of Jaedam Entertainment]

The achievement President Lee Jae-myung is most proud of is the “removal of illegal facilities in mountain valleys” during his time as governor of Gyeonggi Province. (For now, let us set aside the allegations that he appropriated others’ achievements.)

Public officials wielding sledgehammers smashed wooden platforms and returned the valleys to the public. It was cathartic. But that is precisely the problem. The moment this becomes the governing philosophy of a president, the nation heads toward disaster.

The president’s recent actions fit this pattern exactly. Complaining that sanitary pads and school uniforms are too expensive, he barked orders to “come up with countermeasures.” At first glance, it looks like a move for ordinary people.

In reality, however, this is not policy but a crackdown—an extension of the valley platform raids. He is treating a complex economic ecosystem as if it were an illegal structure to be torn down.

At the core of his directives lies a fatal lack of understanding of how markets work.

Take sanitary pads. The president scolded companies, asking, “Why don’t you make cheaper ones?” This betrays ignorance. For women, sanitary pads are not just ordinary consumer goods. They are among the most sensitive products that come into contact with the body. After past controversies over carcinogenic substances, consumers prefer safer, higher-quality products even if they cost more. Prices rose not because companies are gouging, but because consumer standards rose. Yet the president ignores this qualitative demand and simply demands cheaper products.

School uniforms are an even clearer case. He asks, “Why are they more expensive than mass-produced ready-made clothing?” This is an admission that he does not understand economies of scale. The student population is shrinking, and each school has its own design. Small-batch, multi-product manufacturing inevitably raises unit costs. Use cheaper fabric, and parents will immediately object. The structural causes are obvious, yet the president seems to believe that summoning and pressuring companies will solve the problem.

This is a textbook case of “Oh Dae-su administration”—patching things up for today and moving on. A president who should be managing overall price stability and steering the macroeconomic course is instead acting like a village headman, fighting over the price tags of individual items. Showy scolding may suppress prices for a few days, but once the pressure eases, prices will spring back like a compressed coil—just as wooden platforms quietly reappear in valleys once enforcement teams leave.

The president prides himself on understanding the lives of ordinary people. Yet the solutions he offers resemble the fantasies of a wealthy heir who has never worried about money, learning economics at a desk through imagination alone. There is no respect for how markets function or how prices are formed.

Wooden platforms in valleys can simply be removed. But the economy is a living organism. Strike it, and it feels pain; suppress it, and it becomes distorted. A president who believes he can subdue a market driven by 400,000 companies and 50 million consumers with a single hammer. His so-called “refreshing” moves are turning into poison for the economy. This is the misfortune of a country where policy has vanished, leaving only reactive crackdowns behind.

#EconomicPolicy #MarketIntervention #Populism