Sales of apartments over other kinds of housing hit an all-time high in the first quarter as Koreans tended to avoid risky deposit contracts.
Among the 2,995 victims with damages totaling around 459.9 billion won, more than half the victims were young people in their 20s or 30s. Five victims have died by suicide so far, four of them tenants who lived in apartments in Incheon.
Discovery of possibly fraudulent housing schemes is raising questions about the sustainability of jeonse.
The National Assembly on Thursday passed a bill to assist victims of large-scale rental fraud and two other bills to close loopholes that allowed a Democratic Party lawmaker to conduct large-scale cryptocurrency transactions without oversight.
The government will be lowering the state-owned Korea Housing and Urban Guarantee Corporation's (HUG) backing of jeonse loans from 100 percent to 90 percent of the housing unit’s value. Sone 1,207 people have fallen victim to such fraud.
Dozens connected to the "villa king" have been arrested for taking part in what police claim was a massive effort to defraud people out of their housing deposits.
Police said Friday they have arrested 78 people in a massive housing rental scam that caused a combined unpaid sum of 8 billion won ($6.5 million) in deposits belonging to dozens of tenants.
Victims of the ″villa king″ default stage a protest in front of government complex in Sejong, Tuesday. The villa king, who owned 1,139 apartments, died in October without returning deposits to his tenants.
Korea JoongAng Daily Sitemap