In short: to get legal protection for a jeonse or wolse deposit, you need two things in place as early as possible: physical possession of the house plus resident registration completed at your address (Housing Lease Protection Act, Article 3(1)), and a fixed date (확정일자, hwakjeong ilja) stamped on your lease contract (Article 3-2(2)). Together, these give you “opposing power” against a new owner and a ranked right to be repaid from the proceeds if the house is sold at auction — but the exact ranking, and how much of a small deposit is protected first, depends on where in Korea the house is and when you completed each step.
A note on translations: the Housing Lease Protection Act’s official English translation matches the Korean text in force, but the Immigration Act’s English version reflects July 22, 2025, while the Korean text in force was promulgated August 4, 2026 and took effect October 2, 2026, an amendment that leaves Articles 31, 36, and 88-2 cited here unchanged; Immigration Act quotations here are our translation of the current Korean text.
Does this law apply to you as a foreign tenant?
The Act’s scope provision is written in general terms: “This Act shall apply to lease of the whole or part of buildings for residence… This provision shall also apply in cases where a part of a leased house is used for any purpose other than residence” (Housing Lease Protection Act, Article 2). There is no nationality or visa-status requirement in this provision — the Act applies to residential leases, not to a defined category of tenant.
That said, the mechanism the Act relies on for one of its two core protections — resident registration — is built around the Korean resident registration record. The Housing Lease Protection Act’s own text does not say what a foreign national should do instead, but a separate law does: the Immigration Act provides that “alien registration and a report of change of place of stay under this Act shall take the place of resident registration and a moving-in report” (Immigration Act, Article 88-2(2)). In practice, instead of the moving-in report a Korean national files, a registered foreign national files a report of change of place of stay within 15 days of moving in — with either the head of the Si/Gun/Gu or Eup/Myeon/Dong office for the new place of stay, or the head of the regional immigration office with jurisdiction over it (Immigration Act, Article 36(1)) — and that report stands in for the resident registration required by Article 3(1) of the Housing Lease Protection Act. The Eup/Myeon office or Dong community service center covering the house is also one of the offices that can grant a fixed date (Housing Lease Protection Act, Article 3-6(1), discussed below), so the report of change of place of stay and the fixed date both fall within that one office’s authority.
Opposing power: possession plus registration
The first pillar of protection is called “opposing power” (대항력) — the ability to assert your lease against a new owner even if your lease was never registered on the property’s own register.
Article 3(1) sets the rule: “Even though it is not registered, if the lessee is provided with a house and completes resident registration, the lease shall take effect against any third party from the following day thereof. In such cases, the resident registration shall be deemed made at the time of the moving-in report” (Housing Lease Protection Act, Article 3(1)).
Two things follow from this wording:
- Both elements matter, and the later one controls. You need both delivery of the house (essentially, moving in) and completed resident registration. If you move in on one date and register a few days later, opposing power runs from the day after whichever of the two happened last.
- The moving-in report is treated as the registration itself. The Act does not require a separate registration step beyond filing the moving-in report (전입신고) — filing that report is deemed to complete your resident registration for this purpose (Article 3(1)).
Article 3 applies the same rule when a corporation designated by Presidential Decree that provides Housing and Urban Fund–backed jeonse housing to low-income houseless people leases a house and the resident selected by it or by the local government head moves in and registers (Article 3(2)), or when a small or medium enterprise leases a house for its employees and the employee it selects does so (Article 3(3)).
If the house is later sold, the buyer “shall be deemed to have succeeded to the status of the lessor” (Article 3(4)).
Fixed date and preferential repayment
Opposing power alone protects your right to stay and to have the lease honored by a new owner, but it does not rank you against a bank or other creditor if the house is sold at auction — for that, you need a fixed date.
Article 3-2(2) sets out the rule: a lessee who has met the opposing-power requirements under Article 3(1), (2), or (3), and has obtained a fixed date on the lease contract document, has the right to be repaid the deposit out of the proceeds of the house’s sale — whether through a court auction or a tax-arrears public sale — ahead of junior right holders and other creditors (Housing Lease Protection Act, Article 3-2(2)).
A fixed date is granted, on request and for a fee, by any of several offices: the Eup/Myeon office or Dong community service center covering the house, a Si/Gun/Gu branch office (출장소), a district court or its branch, a registry office, or a notary public (Article 3-6(1), (5)). That office keeps a register recording the house’s location, the date granted, and the rent and deposit amount (Article 3-6(2)), and anyone with an interest in the lease — including a prospective tenant, with the landlord’s consent — can request that information before signing (Article 3-6(3), (4)).
You need both opposing power and the fixed date — neither alone gives you the preferential repayment right. Opposing power starts the day after possession and registration (Article 3(1)), and the Supreme Court has held that the preferential repayment right arises from that next day even with a fixed date obtained on or before that day (Supreme Court 98Da26002, Sept. 8, 1998). So finishing all three steps in one day does not rank you ahead of a mortgage registered that day.
Before you can actually collect the deposit under this right, though, you must hand the house back to the buyer — you “shall not be permitted to receive the deposit… without delivering the leased house to the transferee” (Article 3-2(3)).
Small-deposit priority repayment: the regional tables
Separately from the ordinary fixed-date ranking above, the Act gives tenants with a small deposit an extra layer of protection: a specified portion of the deposit is repaid ahead of secured creditors such as mortgage holders — provided the tenant met the Article 3(1) possession-and-registration requirement before the auction application was registered against the house (Housing Lease Protection Act, Article 8(1)).
This specified amount, and which tenants qualify for it, is set by Presidential Decree and cannot exceed half of the house’s value, including the value of its site (Article 8(3)). The Enforcement Decree sets two figures for each region: a ceiling on the deposit itself, at or below which a tenant qualifies at all (Enforcement Decree, Article 11), and the amount of the deposit that is protected first if the tenant qualifies (Enforcement Decree, Article 10(1)).
| Region | Deposit must not exceed, to qualify (Art. 11) | Amount protected first (Art. 10(1)) |
|---|---|---|
| Seoul | ₩165,000,000 | ₩55,000,000 |
| Overconcentration control zone under the Capital Region Readjustment Planning Act (excluding Seoul), Sejong, Yongin, Hwaseong, and Gimpo | ₩145,000,000 | ₩48,000,000 |
| Metropolitan cities (excluding areas within the overconcentration control zone and county areas), Ansan, Gwangju, Paju, Icheon, and Pyeongtaek | ₩85,000,000 | ₩28,000,000 |
| All other areas | ₩75,000,000 | ₩25,000,000 |
These amounts were last changed by the Enforcement Decree amendment of February 21, 2023 (Presidential Decree No. 33254). Under Article 2 of its Addenda, they also apply to leases already in force on that date, but against a creditor who acquired a mortgage or other security right over the house before February 21, 2023, the earlier amounts apply. If the house carries an older mortgage, the table may overstate what is protected against that creditor; earlier amounts are not covered here.
A few limits apply on top of the table: the tenant’s protection is capped at half the house’s value (Enforcement Decree, Article 10(2)); if multiple tenants in the same house would together exceed that half-value cap, each tenant’s protected amount is scaled down proportionally (Article 10(3)); and tenants in the same house who share a household are treated as a single tenant with their deposits combined (Article 10(4)).
Contract length and renewal
The default term is two years. A lease with no fixed term, or a term set at less than two years, is treated as a two-year lease — although the tenant, specifically, may instead insist on the shorter term actually agreed (Housing Lease Protection Act, Article 4(1)). Even after the term ends, the lease is treated as continuing until the deposit is actually repaid (Article 4(2)).
Silent renewal. If the landlord does not notify the tenant of a refusal to renew, or of a proposed change in terms, in the window from six months to two months before the lease ends — and the tenant, for their part, does not give notice by two months before the end — the lease is treated as renewed on the same terms for another two years (Article 6(1), (2)), unless the tenant has fallen behind on rent by an amount equal to two months’ rent or has otherwise materially breached their obligations (Article 6(3)). Once a lease has renewed this way, the tenant may give notice of termination at any time, effective three months after the landlord receives it (Article 6-2).
The tenant’s one-time renewal request. Separately from silent renewal, a tenant may request a renewal within the same six-to-two-month window before the term ends, and the landlord cannot refuse without one of nine grounds listed in the Act: rent arrears of two months, entering the lease by fraud, mutual agreement with compensation, unauthorized subletting, intentional or grossly negligent damage to the house, destruction of the house, repossession for demolition or reconstruction under conditions the Act spells out, the landlord or a direct ascendant/descendant intending to live there, or another significant breach by the tenant (Article 6-3(1)). This request right can be used only once, and a renewal on this basis also runs for two years (Article 6-3(2)). If the landlord refuses on the “intends to live there” ground and then, without good reason, leases the house to someone else before the term that would have applied had the request been granted, the landlord owes compensation (Article 6-3(5)): the amount the parties agreed in advance at the time of refusal, or, failing such an agreement, the greatest of three months’ rent (converting any deposit into a monthly-rent equivalent), the two-year value of the gap between what the landlord charged the new tenant and what the refused tenant was paying, or the tenant’s actual proven loss (Article 6-3(6)).
Rent and deposit increases are capped. Either party can ask for an adjustment if taxes, other public charges, or a shift in economic conditions have made the agreed rent or deposit unreasonable — but not within one year of the lease starting, or within one year of the last increase (Article 7(1)). An increase requested under Article 7(1) is capped at 1/20, or 5%, of the current rent or deposit (Article 7(2); Enforcement Decree, Article 8), though a Special Metropolitan City, Metropolitan City, Special Self-Governing City, Do, or Special Self-Governing Province may set a lower cap for its own area by ordinance (Article 7(2)).
If your deposit isn’t returned when the lease ends
If the lease has ended and your deposit has not been repaid, you can apply to the district court, its branch, or the Si/Gun court covering the house’s location for a leasehold registration order (Housing Lease Protection Act, Article 3-3(1)). The application has to identify the house, explain the grounds, and show the facts supporting it — including, where relevant, that you had already acquired opposing power or a preferential repayment right (Article 3-3(2)).
This order lets you move out without losing your legal position. Once the leasehold registration from the order is completed, you obtain (or, if you already had them, you keep) both opposing power and the preferential repayment right — and losing the day-to-day possession/registration requirements afterward does not undo rights you had already acquired (Article 3-3(5)). You can also claim from the landlord the cost of applying for the order and completing the registration (Article 3-3(8)).
Separately, if you have already gone to court and obtained a final judgment ordering repayment of the deposit (or an equivalent title for enforcement), you can apply for auction of the house without first having to perform, or offer to perform, any obligation of your own as a precondition (Article 3-2(1)).
Before you sign: what your landlord has to show you
Article 3-7 places two disclosure duties on the landlord at signing: showing the tenant the fixed-date register information for that house — its fixed-date history, rent, and deposit — unless the landlord has already consented to let the tenant pull that information directly from the fixed-date office (Article 3-7(1); cross-referencing Article 3-6(3)–(4)); and showing tax payment certificates confirming no unpaid national and local taxes, unless the landlord instead consents to let the tenant check directly (Article 3-7(2)).
Three common misconceptions
“A signed lease contract is enough protection on its own.” A contract alone gives you no opposing power and no preferential repayment right — both depend on separate steps: moving in and completing resident registration for opposing power (Article 3(1)), and getting a fixed date stamped on the contract for preferential repayment (Article 3-2(2)).
“My whole deposit is protected the same way, no matter the amount.” Article 8’s small-deposit priority only protects the capped amount in the regional table, and only if your total deposit is at or below the regional ceiling (Enforcement Decree, Articles 10–11); a larger deposit still relies on the ordinary fixed-date ranking under Article 3-2(2), and even the small-deposit amount cannot exceed half the house’s value (Article 8(3)).
“My landlord can raise the rent by however much the market has moved.” Not during the lease or on a renewal you request. A request to increase rent or deposit under Article 7 cannot exceed 1/20 (5%) of the agreed amount or be made within one year of the contract or the last increase (Article 7(1)–(2); Enforcement Decree, Article 8), and a lease renewed on your request can change rent and deposit only within that same limit (Article 6-3(3)).