Three Statutory Steps and One Optional Guarantee Decide What a Korean Jeonse Deposit Recovers

The Scene

Korean television keeps returning to the same shot: a court auction notice taped beside a rented door, a decade of savings inside somebody else's foreclosure. The statute behind it, the Housing Lease Protection Act (주택임대차보호법), protects nobody automatically.

What the Rule Actually Says

The deposit is not a purchase, and it is not secured by itself

Under a jeonse (전세) contract the tenant pays one large deposit, pays no monthly rent, and is repaid the same nominal amount at the end, the landlord holding and using the money for the term. The Act applies to leases of residential buildings in whole or in part (Article 2), and Article 12 extends it to an unregistered jeonse contract, reading "jeonse money" as "lease deposit," so the pure-deposit tenant and the deposit-plus-rent tenant fall under the same articles.

What the Act does not give the tenant is a registered security interest. Article 3(1) opens with the words "even where there is no registration." The tenant's position is assembled instead out of ordinary administrative acts, and the order in which they happen decides the money.

Step one: delivery plus resident registration

Article 3(1) provides that where the tenant has taken delivery of the house and completed resident registration, the lease takes effect against third parties from the following day, and that resident registration is deemed made at the time the move-in report (전입신고) is filed. Two clerical acts produce what Korean practice calls 대항력, opposability.

"From the following day" is not a formality. A mortgage registered on the day the tenant moves in ranks ahead of the tenant, whose effect against third parties has not started. Article 3(4) deems a transferee of the house to have succeeded to the landlord's position, so a sale mid-lease does not by itself endanger a tenant holding opposability. Foreign tenants get the registration half elsewhere: Article 88-2(2) of the Immigration Act (출입국관리법) makes alien registration and a report of change of residence substitute for both.

Step two: the fixed date stamp

Article 3-2(2) gives a tenant who holds the Article 3 requirements and a fixed date stamp (확정일자) on the lease document the right to be repaid out of the proceeds of the house, land included, ahead of subordinate right holders and other creditors, in a compulsory auction or a public sale. The stamp certifies a date; it is not an approval. Article 3-6(1) lists the issuing authorities, from eup, myeon and dong offices to district courts, registry offices and notaries. Two limits sit next to the right. Under Article 3-2(3) the tenant cannot receive the deposit without delivering the house to the successful bidder, and Article 3-5 extinguishes the lease on the auction sale except where the lease has opposability and the deposit is unpaid.

Step three: the first slice

Article 8(1) is a separate and blunter mechanism. A tenant whose deposit falls under a regional threshold is repaid a fixed portion of it ahead of holders of security interests, mortgagees included, provided the Article 3(1) requirements were met before the entry of the auction registration. A fixed date stamp is not a condition, so a tenant who moved in and registered but never had the contract stamped still keeps this floor. Article 8(3) delegates the threshold and the amount to Presidential Decree.

When the tenant has to move out

Opposability and priority both rest on delivery and registration, so moving out destroys them. Article 3-3(1) is the repair: where the lease has ended and the deposit has not been returned, the tenant may apply to the court with jurisdiction over the house for a lease registration order (임차권등기명령). Under Article 3-3(5) the tenant acquires opposability and priority on completion of the registration, and pre-existing rights survive even if the Article 3 requirements are lost afterwards. Article 3-3(3) borrows Article 292(3) of the Civil Execution Act, so the registration can reach the title before the landlord is served.

What the landlord must show before signing

Article 3-7, inserted on 18 April 2023, requires the landlord to present two things when concluding the lease: the fixed date, rent and deposit record for that house under Article 3-6(3), and tax payment certificates under Article 108 of the National Tax Collection Act and Article 5(2) of the Local Tax Collection Act. For either, the landlord may instead consent before signing to the tenant inspecting the unpaid amounts directly. Unpaid national taxes can outrank a tenant in the distribution.

The layer that actually pays

All of the above is ranking, not cash. The product that pays is the jeonse deposit return guarantee issued by the Korea Housing and Urban Guarantee Corporation (HUG, 주택도시보증공사). It is optional, the tenant buys it, and it has hard gates.

The Numbers

Articles 11 and 10(1) of the Enforcement Decree, as amended by Presidential Decree No. 33254 and effective from 21 February 2023, set the thresholds now in force.

Region	Deposit ceiling to qualify (Decree Art. 11)	Amount repaid first (Decree Art. 10(1))
Seoul Special City	165,000,000 won	55,000,000 won
Overconcentration control region outside Seoul, plus Sejong, Yongin, Hwaseong, Gimpo	145,000,000 won	48,000,000 won
Metropolitan cities outside that region and outside gun areas, plus Ansan, Gwangju, Paju, Icheon, Pyeongtaek	85,000,000 won	28,000,000 won
All other areas	75,000,000 won	25,000,000 won

The Seoul figure of 165,000,000 won is the line for qualifying, not the payment; the payment is 55,000,000 won. Under Article 10(2) and (3) a protected amount above half the house value is cut to that half, and where several tenants share a house that half is split in proportion to their protected amounts. Under Article 10(4) tenants keeping a joint household count as one.

The chart plots those figures by the date each revision took effect, which in Korean practice is not always the date of promulgation. The 2010 pair, 75,000,000 and 25,000,000 won, reached 165,000,000 and 55,000,000 won across five revisions, the last effective 21 February 2023. The 2014 pair is the one checked here against its promulgation date, 30 December 2013; the other five are plotted from their entry-into-force dates without that comparison being made. The amount repaid first has stayed near one third of the qualifying deposit throughout.

Three more figures come from the same Decree. Article 8(1) caps a demand to increase rent or deposit at one twentieth, five per cent, of the agreed amount, and Article 8(2) bars any such demand within one year of the contract or the last increase. Article 9 sets the rate for converting a deposit into monthly rent at ten per cent a year under Article 7-2(1) of the Act, or the Bank of Korea base rate plus two percentage points under Article 7-2(2), whichever is lower.

The guarantee runs on numbers HUG publishes itself. The deposit must be at most 700,000,000 won in the Seoul metropolitan area and 500,000,000 won elsewhere. For a deposit-plus-rent contract HUG restates the rent as deposit at its own conversion rate and tests the restated figure against that ceiling. HUG gave that rate as 6.5 per cent when its product page was read on 24 August 2026, applying to new applications and to renewals with an increased deposit filed from 1 July 2026. The page does not give the rate used before that date, so an earlier filing may have been tested against a different one. It is HUG's product rate for its own eligibility arithmetic, not the statutory conversion rate in Article 9 above. A new application must be filed before half the lease term has passed, counted from the later of the balance payment and move-in report dates.

Three of the gates are arithmetic on a single figure. HUG multiplies the house price by a collateral recognition ratio of 90 per cent and calls the result the valuation (주택가액). The guarantee limit is the valuation minus senior claims, and the deposit plus senior claims must fit inside the valuation. Senior claims alone must sit within 60 per cent of the valuation, which is 54 per cent of the house price. HUG publishes a worked example: on a house priced at 100,000,000 won the valuation is 90,000,000 won, so senior claims of 55,000,000 won fail a ceiling of 54,000,000 won. Detached, multi-household and multi-family houses face a further line, adding the other tenants' senior deposits and raising the limit to 80 per cent of that valuation. The lease must run at least a year, and a new one be concluded through a licensed broker.

Premiums run from 0.097 to 0.211 per cent a year: guaranteed amount times rate times lease days divided by 365. Bands turn on deposit size, house type and debt ratio, the debt ratio being senior claims plus the deposit, divided by the valuation. A 200,000,000 won apartment jeonse at 70 per cent or under sits in the band above 100,000,000 and up to 200,000,000 won, which is 0.102 per cent: 204,000 won a year, 408,000 won over two years. Discounts of 40 to 60 per cent apply to listed household categories.

Where This Doesn't Apply

• Short-stay lettings. Article 11 of the Act — a different provision from Article 11 of the Enforcement Decree, which carries the deposit ceilings above — provides that the Act does not apply where the lease is clearly for temporary use. None of the three steps exists in that case.
• Corporate tenants. Article 3(1) is written around resident registration, which a company cannot file. Article 3(2) and 3(3) carve out two exceptions: a corporation funded by the Housing and Urban Fund providing jeonse rental housing to low-income non-homeowners, and a small or medium enterprise leasing for an employee's residence.
• Registration completed after the auction is registered. Article 8(1) requires the Article 3(1) requirements to be in place before the auction registration is entered, so a tenant who files the move-in report after that entry is outside the first slice. That tenant is not left with nothing: opposability still begins the day after delivery and registration, and a stamp still creates a priority right under Article 3-2(2), ranking from the date those requirements were completed. What is missing is seniority. In an auction already on the register every claim recorded earlier stands ahead, so the ranking is worth whatever those claims leave behind.
• Opposability junior to a mortgage. Where a mortgage was registered before the tenant's opposability began, the tenant is a claimant in the distribution, not a survivor of the sale.
• Buildings HUG will not cover. Official residences, home-based childcare centres, group homes, community child centres and neighbourhood living facilities are outside the guarantee, as is a building recorded as an illegal structure in the building ledger (apartments excepted), or one where the building and land are not both the landlord's.
• The special act is a status, not a payment. Article 3(1) of the Act on Special Cases concerning Support for Victims of Jeonse Fraud and Housing Stability sets four cumulative requirements: a natural-person tenant with delivery, resident registration and a fixed date stamp, or a lease registration or a jeonse right under Article 303 of the Civil Act; a deposit within the ceiling that provision fixes, which the support committee under Article 6 may raise for regional conditions; an auction, sale, bankruptcy or rehabilitation leaving two or more tenants unpaid; and reasonable grounds to suspect the landlord never intended to repay. Both money figures there have been amended and could not be checked against the statute in force here, so they are left to the current Article 3(1). Article 3(2) excludes a tenant whose deposit is fully covered by a guarantee, and one whose whole deposit qualifies for first-slice repayment. Two dates here do different work and should not be read against each other: the Act took effect on 1 June 2023 as Act No. 19425 and runs four years from that date under Article 2 of its Addenda as amended on 20 May 2025, while the text now in force is the version amended by Act No. 21634, effective 12 May 2026.

If You Are Actually in This Situation

1. Before signing. Ask for the Article 3-7 disclosures by name: the fixed-date, rent and deposit record for the unit, and the tax certificates or written consent to inspect unpaid taxes. An interested party may also request that record directly under Article 3-6(3).
2. On the day the balance is paid. File the move-in report at the dong community service centre or through Government24, and obtain the fixed date stamp the same day from one of the authorities in Article 3-6(1). Opposability begins the following day, so nothing is gained by waiting.
3. For the guarantee. Applications go through HUG branch offices, the banks HUG delegates, or the mobile routes it lists: its own Anshim Jeonse app and the property sections of Naver Pay, Kakao Pay and Toss. File before half the term has run.
4. If the deposit is not returned at the end of the term. Article 4(2) of the Act deems the lease relationship to continue until the deposit is returned. That is the whole of what the provision says, and it is the ground on which a tenant stays on past the end of the term. Before moving out, apply for a lease registration order under Article 3-3(1) and claim the cost from the landlord under Article 3-3(8).
5. For a dispute short of litigation. Article 14(1) places housing lease dispute conciliation committees at branches of the Korea Legal Aid Corporation, the Korea Land and Housing Corporation and the Korea Real Estate Board (한국부동산원). That third body was the Korea Appraisal Board (한국감정원) until Act No. 17459 of 9 June 2020 renamed it, in force six months after promulgation, Article 2(1) of its Addenda deeming the former body to be the latter. Cities and provinces may add committees of their own.
6. For the deposit return action itself. Article 13 applies parts of the Trial of Small Claims Act to a deposit return suit brought by a tenant against a landlord.

The notice on the door is where the drama begins and where the statute has nothing left to decide. The outcome was settled earlier: whether the move-in report was filed, whether the stamp was taken the same day, what was already on the title, and whether the guarantee was bought in time.

Numbers to re-check. The Decree thresholds move at irregular intervals, last reset by Presidential Decree No. 33254 effective 21 February 2023. HUG revises its premium bands, its collateral recognition ratio and its conversion rate on its own schedule, and the victim-status ceiling in the special act is amended too, which is why it is left unstated above. Confirm the statute at the Korea Law Information Center and the terms at HUG before relying on any figure here.

This is general information about published Korean statutes, decrees and public-corporation product terms as of August 2026. It is not legal, tax or insurance advice. Anyone facing a live deposit dispute or an auction should consult a qualified Korean attorney or the competent authority.