Korean rental deposit fraud prevention book: Defend Your Jeonse Deposit

The anxiety that jeonse fraud is not someone else’s problem

Jeonse fraud is so serious that it is hard even to put into words, and it can push a person’s life to the absolute limit. Yet it is still constantly in the news years later. Quite a few people I know have already been affected, and if you go one degree farther out, there are practically countless victims.

I live under a jeonse lease too, and although I thought I had looked into this and that before signing, I do not think I can help still feeling anxious.

Back then, I was ignorant and therefore brave. Deposit insurance was available, the landlord had no loans, the previous tenant had received their deposit and moved out safely, and there was no deposit swap—okay! That was how I signed. Looking back now, I think I was brave because there was so much I did not know.

Even with deposit insurance, there are many cases where people cannot get their money back. And if you asked me now, “Can you properly read your housing-contract papers or special clauses again?” honestly, I still do not really know.

Honestly, people who have not encountered jeonse fraud so far may simply not have met a fraudster. If they do, anyone can become a victim and get scammed. When a home contract involves sums in the tens of millions, hundreds of millions, or even billions of won, it is not something you can sign by trusting only a landlord’s goodness or morality.

Organizing jeonse and real-estate contract knowledge through a book

This is knowledge that will be invaluable throughout life, yet we cannot learn it at school or anywhere else. And learning it by running into it firsthand after entering society means making decisions serious enough to threaten a person’s life. That is why I felt this is a book not just I, but all of us, need to read and learn from. The author works in the field and also runs a YouTube channel called Deokbang Research Institute, where they share various kinds of knowledge about jeonse and real-estate contracts.

I subscribed to the channel as soon as I saw it, but when you are surrounded by such a flood of news and information, the knowledge you hear often gets scattered everywhere and never feels organized.

Having it published as one book felt like receiving all the knowledge I needed neatly in one hand. Looking at the table of contents, the story of how jeonse fraud affects newlywed couples unfolds almost like storytelling, and it was incredibly immersive. Before I knew it, I was so drawn into the situation that the crease between my brows would not relax.

At the same time, various real-estate terms appear, including priority repayment rights and opposability. The further you read, the more clearly the terms are explained later in the book, so even a complete real-estate beginner like me did not find it difficult to read. There will be many more occasions to sign home contracts, and since you cannot judge whether someone is a scammer by their face or appearance, having the perspective to choose a safe home through as much objective information as possible has become even more important.

Why I want to read it again and again before signing a home contract

If the home you finally obtained after just breaking out into the world and painstakingly saving every penny turned out to be a fraudster’s trap, and there were no way out of that trap, there could hardly be a more hopeless situation.... To prevent that even a little, to become a safe and smart tenant and protect my money, I need proper knowledge—not something I heard somewhere, not rumors. (Really, I am saying this to myself.)

I think it is a precious book that will shine even more brightly when an important moment comes for someone in the family to sign a home contract, whether because they are moving out on their own or getting married. So I plan to read it as much as possible, over and over. Even if I memorize it like the multiplication tables, I will probably still freeze up when I am actually there.

If someone around me is considering jeonse, monthly rent, or anything similar because they are moving out or getting married, I would want to tell them to read this without fail before they go view a home.

As I read this book, I have been comparing my current situation, the parts I was lacking in, the parts I regretted, and all the documents I had been carrying around, trying to become at least a little more familiar with these unfamiliar papers.

The very idea of entrusting an enormous amount of money to someone else in the name of a jeonse or monthly-rent deposit seems absurd, really. But if we cannot change the world, should we not at least live with a way to avoid its dangers as much as possible? In that sense, I recommend reading this if you want to protect our precious money—our jeonse and monthly-rent deposits.

So your hard-earned money does not get scammed away ㅠ.ㅠ