Background
Our client leased the second floor of a residential building in Gyeonggi Province in December 2021 for two years, paying a deposit of KRW 439,000,000. When the lease expired in December 2023, the client asked for the deposit back. The landlord said she could not afford it and then stopped answering calls and messages. A certified letter was returned unclaimed. Unable to recover the deposit, the client could not move out.
What Was at Stake
The landlord's duty to return the deposit was clear. The difficulty was procedural: a lawsuit normally cannot move forward smoothly if the defendant never receives the court papers. The client needed an enforceable judgment despite the landlord's disappearance.
How Changchun Helped
Law Firm Changchun filed a deposit return claim on the client's behalf, setting out the lease, payment of the deposit, expiry of the term, the demand for repayment, and the landlord's silence. Because the papers could not be delivered, the court proceeded by service by publication (gongsi songdal, a procedure that treats documents as served once they are posted by the court when the defendant cannot be located) and accepted the claim as pleaded.
Outcome
In September 2024, the first-instance court ordered the landlord to pay the client KRW 439,000,000. The landlord was ordered to bear the litigation costs, and the court declared the judgment provisionally enforceable, so the client could begin enforcement before it became final.
A landlord's disappearance does not stop a deposit claim. Service by publication allows a tenant to obtain an enforceable judgment even when the landlord never appears. (Outcomes depend on the facts of each case.)