Abstract

What factors fuelled the South Korean property boom since 2002, and what (if anything) can be done to prevent a U.S.-style subprime crisis in the local real estate markets? This issue has grown even more urgent given observations of a potential bubble and burst scenario following the U.S. sub-prime crisis. This paper aims to bring together these concerns, from an interdisciplinary regulatory, economic and socio-cultural perspective, by (1) providing a comprehensive and current overview of housing market dynamics in Korea, (2) examining South Korea's real estate regulatory policies since 2002 withstatistical evidence from the Bank of Korea (BOK), and (3) providinga brief policy implication and suggestion sectionregarding the Korean housing market conditions in the post-subprime crisis era.