President Lee Jae Myung called for a humble and flexible approach to South Korea’s tax reform debate and said contested policies should remain open to revision rather than being pushed through unchanged. Speaking at a Cabinet meeting at the Sejong Government Complex on Tuesday, Lee defended the government’s Aug. 3 tax reform plan, which raises taxes on apartment owners who do not live in their properties and scales back incentives for the conventional individual savings account (ISA), a tax-advantaged savings account. After backlash from young people over the ISA changes, he had already ordered a full review on Friday and argued that policy disagreement is a normal part of democratic governance. Lee also welcomed open disagreement between the industry and labor ministries over whether semiconductor researchers should be exempt from South Korea’s 52-hour workweek, calling such clashes a proper democratic process as the government weighs the “megaspecial zone act” tied to a proposed chip cluster in the Jeolla region. He urged ministries and local governments to remove outdated practices and investment bottlenecks affecting three state-led megaprojects in chips, AI data centers and physical AI (AI embodied in machines or robots). Industry Minister Kim Jung-Kwan said the government is targeting 2029 for initial completion of chip fabrication plant construction in Jeolla, with construction expected to begin once the Gwangju military air base is relocated in the second half of 2028 and operations potentially starting as early as 2029. The meeting also covered suicide prevention, debt relief for chronically delinquent borrowers, pension reform, crime-related death statistics and police conduct, while Lee pressed for clearer executive rules under the “Yellow Envelope” act and renewed his push to establish Sejong as the center of national governance during his term.