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 ...