Instead of allowing the market to guide the economy, over the past 30 years the Korean government has manipulated endogenous variables in order to facilitate rapid growth. For example, a steep rise in property prices caused by a surge in demand has not been uncommon in Korea over the past three decades. One key cause of the rise was a legal ceiling on interest rates in the face of recurrent high inflation. Inflation in general erodes the real value of any nominal assets, especially if there is a limit to the compensation one can demand for high inflation(i.e. inflation premium in nominal interest rates) and thus real assets such as land and buildings are quite desirable alternatives.