Background
In November 2021 our client, a company, leased a home in Gyeonggi Province for a foreign employee, paying a jeonse deposit of KRW 460,000,000 and registering a jeonse right.
In December 2023 the home was sold to the counterparty. When our client declined to renew, the new owner asked for time to find a new tenant. A new contract pushed repayment to March 31, 2024, with 10% annual late-payment damages, and our client moved out that day.
The owner never paid and stopped responding. In February 2025 our client applied for a foreclosure auction based on its jeonse right, and in January 2026 it received KRW 326,561,420 from the auction proceeds.
What Was at Stake
A company cannot register a residence, so it lacks the protection the Housing Lease Protection Act gives individual tenants against new owners, and the auction excluded late-payment damages. Whom to pursue for the balance, and for how much?
How Changchun Helped
Law Firm Changchun made the following arguments, which the court accepted in full:
The right defendant. Under Supreme Court precedent, a buyer who acquires property during a jeonse term takes over the duty to return the deposit, so the counterparty, not the auction buyer, owed the balance.
The true nature of the extension. The new contract merely postponed repayment for the owner's convenience; our client had already vacated, as its certified letter sent that day confirmed.
A precise calculation. KRW 460,000,000 minus KRW 326,561,420 left KRW 133,438,580; adding KRW 59,228,400 in damages accrued on the distributed amount gave a claim of KRW 192,666,980.
Outcome
The owner did not contest, and in July 2026 the first-instance court granted the claim in full without a hearing, ordering payment of KRW 192,666,980 plus late-payment damages and costs.
Corporate tenants may not recover everything through an auction alone; pursuing the new owner with a careful calculation can secure the rest. (Outcomes depend on the facts of each case.)