Korea's Special Act for Jeonse Fraud Victims: A Four-Year Fight Over Who Qualifies
Discussion turned to criticism that the bar for recognizing victims under Korea's special act for jeonse (long-term lease deposit) fraud remains too high. In the law's early days, a police complaint alone was often enough to gain recognition, but the standard has since tightened to require a case to be referred to prosecutors, making it steadily harder to have fraud formally recognized. It was noted that recognition is especially difficult unless there is clear, organized deception or a large-scale case like the notorious "villa king" scheme.
At the core of victim relief is recovering the jeonse deposit itself, and debate continues over whether it's appropriate for the government to fund that relief. Critics argue there's little basis for spending public money on what is essentially a private fraud dispute between individuals, and that singling out jeonse fraud victims for support is unfair to victims of other crimes, such as voice phishing or secondhand-marketplace scams -- a debate that has persisted since the law was first enacted.
In response, it was argued that rescuing even one victim first can be the starting point that eventually leads to helping ten, then a hundred. Refusing to act simply because not everyone can be helped at once, the argument goes, guarantees no progress is ever made. Housing was described as a core human need, and for many young people and those without homes, a jeonse deposit represents essentially their entire net worth -- making its protection one of the most urgent forms of relief there is.
The discussion recalled a 2021 public petition, from a time when jeonse deposits were expected to jump from 300 million won to as much as 550 million won, in which a desperate victim wrote that there was no legal way to earn that much money in a year without risking everything -- illustrating the backdrop against which the special act was first debated.