By Jisu
Published Dec. 23, 2024
Translated by Marilyn Hook
Editor’s Note: On the night of December 3, 2024,
President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law, throwing the political world into
chaos and danger, but the power of citizens who wanted to protect democracy
prevented a civil war. On the 7th, a motion to impeach the president was
proposed in the National Assembly, but it failed due to the irresponsible
absence of lawmakers from the ruling People Power Party. Citizens who poured
into the National Assembly, the squares, and the streets raised their voices
for impeachment, and on the 14th, the second impeachment motion was passed in a
plenary session (204 votes in favor, 85 votes against, 3 abstentions, and 8
invalid votes out of a total of 300).
However, our goal is not limited to impeachment.
We have already experienced the impeaching of a president [in 2016] and the
politics that followed. We do not want democracy to regress, nor repeat itself,
but to advance further. To do so, we must not only impeach Yoon Suk Yeol and
punish those responsible for the attempted self-coup, but also end
authoritarian politics and change a society that still muzzles the voices of
minorities. It is time to further expand the voices of change. In this series,
we are documenting the voices rising from the streets now, which say not ‘impeachment
first’ but ‘along with impeachment.’
Yoon Suk Yeol and rental deposit fraud
“It’s a difficult time [for the country] right
now, so I feel a bit awkward talking about this… but the landlord stole my
deposit.”
“I know it’s a difficult time, but I have
nowhere to go for help, so I thought I’d ask…”
What’s more urgent: impeaching the president on
charges of sedition or recovering your security deposit? While the whole
country was in an uproar about impeaching Yoon, Tenant A, who lives in Seoul,
lost their security deposit. The landlord promised to return at least some of
the deposit even if he couldn’t return it all—and then broke even that promise.
Tenant A would not be able to move if they wanted to [because they would be
unable to pay the next place’s security deposit]. I also heard about their
difficult situation, on a rather tense Friday, the day before the second
plenary session of the National Assembly; it was after the impeachment motion
had first failed and the day before it would finally pass.
 |
| Before participating in the rally calling for impeachment on December 14, the Incheon Michuhol District Rental Deposit Fraud Victims Countermeasures Committee took this picture in front of an apartment building where rental deposit fraud had occurred. The sign reads: “Yoon Suk Yeol, you’re a public disaster!!! Get rid of Yoon Suk Yeol, stop rental deposit fraud!” (Source: Minsnail Union) |
Those who need housing but do not own property rent housing using a security deposit as collateral.[1] For decades, half of the people who have worked this land together have been tenants. Despite this, the institutional mechanisms for protecting deposits have been so weak that it has been common for the deposit not to be returned on time. Furthermore, the issue of housing was long treated as a private matter that should be resolved by the family unit, not an area where the state should intervene and guarantee rights. The housing rental market that Korean society had neglected for decades was essentially a lawless zone.
Yoon Suk Yeol has always blamed the previous
government. Even if we concede that not all blame lies with the current
government, it would still be the current government’s responsibility to take
the best possible measures right now. Yoon Suk Yeol has abandoned that
responsibility. Since his inauguration, he has been pushing for tax cuts for
the wealthy and for cuts to welfare, and the victims of rental deposit fraud
have not been a major consideration for him.
The influence of Yoon on Tenant A, who is
simultaneously facing national unrest and rental deposit fraud, is enormous.
Tenant A is not recognized as a victim according to the provisions of the special
law on rental deposit fraud enacted by the Yoon administration. According to
the current regulations, if your case is judged to be an “ordinary non-return
of security deposit,” you are not recognized as a victim of rental deposit
fraud—even though the landlord has not returned your deposit. This is the will of the Yoon Suk Yeol
administration.
In 2023, when housing rights activists and
victims of rental deposit fraud were campaigning together to enact a special
law on the issue, the government chose restrictive criteria for recognizing rental
deposit fraud victims in order to downplay the scale of the harm caused by rental
deposit fraud and limit the scope of support for the victims. By framing taking
action as a potential waste of taxpayers’ money, the government minimized the
state’s responsibility for fraud prevention and relief for victims. The then-Minister
of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Won Hee-ryong, who claimed to be
responsible for solving rental deposit fraud, did not recognize the issue as a
social crisis and made absurd remarks, like that all types of fraud are equal
and taxpayers’ money should not be used to support rental deposit fraud victims.
Having thus caused enormous pain to tenants, he served as minister for as long
as he wanted under the protection of Yoon Suk Yeol, then ran for the National
Assembly as a member of the ruling party and left the table for discussions on rental
deposit fraud forever. But Tenant A and many others, as victims not recognized
as such under the current law put in place by Yoon and ex-minister Won, are
stuck where they are.
Rental deposit fraud is still occurring. The
list of official victims is nearing 30,000, and there are other victims who do
not qualify for official status and are wandering on their own outside the
list.
For a while, Yoon Suk Yeol would announce
various measures to combat rental deposit fraud; he said that he would conduct
“an intense investigation to punish [perpetrators] as a warning to others” and
“track [them] down to the ends of the earth.” The heavy media coverage treated
these claims as plausible. What was the result? Two years later, some members of
the “Construction King” gang behind about 3,000 rental deposit fraud incidents
were found not guilty on appeal. Victims of rental deposit fraud hold one-person
protests in front of the Supreme Court [where the cases will go next] every
day. Even this practice almost became illegal due to martial law. The idea that
Yoon would track down rental deposit fraudsters to the ends of the earth is
ridiculous. Instead, he is the one being tracked.
 |
| “In your opinion, what is good housing?” Attendees at the Dec. 16 book talk on “A Jeonse/Rental House is My House Too! A Guidebook for Finding Housing” posted their answers. (Source: Minsnail Union) |
The world still blames tenants who sign fraudulent jeonse contracts. The weight of the criticism and reprimands is suffocating, and it tramples on their hopes of restoring their lives to how they were before their money was stolen. A young woman who was victimized by rental deposit fraud and spent a long time seeking relief died recently. I have not found a proper way to sufficiently estimate how many more deaths are not reported. So every day, I think about how someone must still be trapped in the hell of rental deposit fraud. I dare to think first about the things that could have been granted to these tenants at any moment, things they must have wished for and, through their deaths, protested the unjustness of their not receiving.
Even if Yoon Suk Yeol steps down, another
president will take his place. Whoever volunteers to run the government on our
behalf next, I want to post a list of the names of rental deposit fraud victims
somewhere they can’t help but see it.
On the 7th, I met Ahn Sang-mi, the chairwoman of the Incheon Michuhol-gu Rental Deposit Fraud Victims Countermeasures Committee, who was standing in line to speak at the impeachment rally’s podium. The line was so long that they ended up cutting it off two people before her. Struck by regret, I asked her what she would have said if she had taken the podium. Ms. Ahn told me about what would happen after Yoon Suk Yeol was removed. She said that if the government changes, she hoped that the parties in the National Assembly who recognized the issue as a public disaster [as opposed to an individual problem] would gain power and “pay attention to the blind spot issue of rental deposit fraud.” She also said that the fact that new cases of rental deposit fraud keep emerging because “there are virtually no measures in place to prevent [it]” must be addressed. Above all, she emphasized that “the perception that rental deposit fraud is a public disaster” is important, and “if we do not move past viewing housing lease contracts as private contracts, the harm of rental deposit fraud cannot be prevented.” She also added that we need systems for supervising landlords and real estate agents and punishing their wrongdoings.
I didn't think we were asking for much. We just
wanted justice to be served at home, too, and for everyone to be able to find a
home and move safely. It was clear that this was also one of the stories that
had to be told along with Yoon Suk Yeol's departure. The revised special law on
rental deposit fraud that Yoon vetoed must be improved and passed.
The rice cakes and housing of Dongja-dong
residents
During the impeachment rally on the 14th, the
sharing of rice cakes by Dongja-dong shantytown residents became a hot topic on
social media. A note on the rice cakes’ packaging read: “Impeach Yoon Suk Yeol
immediately!!! We come from the poor Dongja-dong (Yongsan)[2]
area, the so-called ‘shantytown.’ We have pooled our money together to prepare
some rice cakes. Please eat them and get the energy to keep fighting together.”
 |
| On the Dongja-dong Dark Tour, which was held as part of the 2024 Homeless Memorial Ceremony. (Source: Minsnail Union) |
The residents of Dongja-dong were having a busy December. The day before the rally, they would have collected rice to make rice cakes, and on the day before that, Thursday the 12th, they led the “Dongja-dong Dark Tour” as part of the 2024 Homeless Memorial Ceremony. About fifteen citizens gathered and walked through every nook and cranny of the Dongja-dong alleys for two hours, seeing and hearing stories of a shantytown with decades of history. Jjokbang [flophouses] where you can’t fully stretch out your arms to the side and you can touch the ceiling, jjokbang where the monthly rent suddenly jumped from 150,000 won to 300,000 won after the tenant became eligible for housing benefits, areas that were shantytowns for decades but are now filled with high-rise buildings where each apartments’ jeonse deposit is tens of billions of won, jjokbang landlords who kick out tenants in order to make money by selling to private developers.
In fact, Dongja-dong should already be the site
of a public housing project. In 2021, a government project was announced to
ensure stable housing for residents of its jjokbang. However, this
public housing project was delayed when the Yoon Suk Yeol administration came
to power. Several years have passed. The number of jjokbang dwellers who
died without ever being able to move into better housing has reached 111. A
Dongja-dong resident and member of the Dongja-dong Sarangbang [according to this
article, a “grassroots organization dedicated to assisting the elderly who
are living alone”], who was leading the dark tour, joked, “Are they waiting for
us all to die?” As I contemplated how to react to that, resentment toward the Yoon
Suk Yeol administration bubbled up. A public housing project that contains the
hopes of the living and the resentment of the dead is the justice that should
stand tall as our home in the place where Yoon Suk Yeol was removed.
Yoon Suk Yeol and housing rights
In the summer after Yoon Suk Yeol was elected,
women, urban workers, people with developmental disabilities, the poor, the
housing vulnerable, children, and adolescents died when a number of
semi-basement living spaces flooded due to heavy rains. In the face of climate
disaster, inequality becomes a disaster. While some people merely suffered
flooding damage to their imported cars, others lost their lives. Around 180
labor and civic groups launched the Disaster Inequality Memorial Action under
the slogan “Inequality is a Disaster.” The group urged the national government
and local governments to: expand public rental housing and guarantee everyone’s
right to housing; establish nationwide
measures to address the frequent deaths of people with developmental disabilities
and their families; take steps to prevent the recurrence of climate disasters
and fundamentally address the climate crisis.
The Yoon Suk Yeol government responded to this
with a 2023 budget plan that would cut the public rental housing budget by 5.7
trillion won. Public rental housing is necessary, but they have taken the bold
step of drastically reducing it. In response, on October 17 of the same year—the
International Day for the Eradication of Poverty—residents of goshiwon,
residents of jjokbang, street homeless people, young renters, and
housing, labor, and civil society groups gathered in front of the National
Assembly, pitched a tent, and held a 69-day sit-in protest demanding public
rental housing under the name “Hand Over Public Rental Housing Sit-in Group.”
 |
| At the book talk on “A Jeonse/Rental House is My House Too! A Guidebook for Finding Housing” on December 16. (Source: Minsnail Union) |
In fact, housing rights activists have set up camp in front of the National Assembly every year since Yoon’s inauguration. In 2022, they chanted, “Hand over public rental housing!” in 2023, they chanted, “Resolve rental deposit fraud! Tenants’ rights!” and in 2024, instead of holding a sit-in, they created a public square in front of the National Assembly with other citizens and chanted, “Yoon Suk Yeol, step down!”
But will there really be a place for housing
rights in the space Yoon Suk Yeol vacated? It’s not easy to tell. In the second
week of December, when all Democratic Party lawmakers were working together to
pass the impeachment bill against Yoon Suk Yeol, the discussion on an amendment
to the Housing Lease Protection Act that would have given tenants the right not
to be arbitrarily evicted was canceled due to several Democratic Party lawmakers’
withdrawal from the joint initiative pushing for it. A budget with further reduced
funding for public rental housing was passed without even a proper discussion.
There was not even a proper complaint raised against the Yoon Suk Yeol
government for pushing ahead with easing reconstruction regulations that discourage
real estate speculation.
Singer Lang Lee performed at the December 14
impeachment rally, filling the square in front of the National Assembly with
lines like, “Our room is small and noisy.” While listening to her, I thought of
the 400 young tenants I know. With an average monthly salary of 2.45 million
won, we easily qualify for public “Happy Housing,” as its maximum cutoff is 4
million won. But when you consider the minimum wage, we earn a more ordinary
monthly income than you might think. And fortunately, the average monthly rent for
those who live in public rental and social housing is in the 300,000 won range,
so our housing costs take up only around 18% of our income. However, we are
already worried about where to go after our 10-year eligibility period for
public rental housing ends, and about getting older. If we were to find housing
in the regular private rental market, we would have to move every 0.9 years,
pay 632,000 won in monthly rent, and keep in mind that 73% of the victims of rental
deposit fraud are young people.
 |
| “What kind of housing democracy do you want after the impeachment?” Attendees of the book talk on “A Jeonse/Rental House is My House Too! A Guidebook for Finding Housing” were asked to write about their ideal housing politics. |
As I hummed along to the next lyric, “Money’s always far away from us,” I continued to think about wanting to live without worrying so much about money. Before being the biggest reason for worrying about money, a home should be the smallest unit where I take care of myself, and a place where I share care with the community I live with. Regardless of marriage and blood relations, I should be guaranteed a safe place to live with whoever I want, and I should be able to live in housing where everyone’s survival is not at risk even if we don’t have a lot of money. Rather than being unilaterally notified of contract terminations or redevelopment and arbitrarily kicked out of the housing and neighborhood I was living in because I do not own the property, I should be able to participate equally as a fellow citizen who is part of this building, neighborhood, and community, and form democratic relationships.
In our homes just as in the nation, the politics
of rampant inequality, discrimination, and violence must now step down to make
way for democracy for equal and safe living. Housing is not an individual
issue, but a right that society must guarantee together. Every day, I wonder
where the people gathered in the square come from and go home to, and I sit in
the square and dream of our democracy being realized in our homes.
About the Author: Jisu is a housing rights
activist. She wants to live in housing from which she can see trees and sunsets,
where cats meow, where there are friends nearby to eat with, and where the
price is affordable, the residence period is guaranteed, and she doesn’t have
to worry about rental deposit fraud. She helped launch and serves as co-chair
of the Committee for Civil Society Countermeasures for Rental Deposit Fraud
& High-risk Jeonse, where she provides housing education and
counseling to renters. Her term as the chair of the youth housing rights group
Minsnail Union is coming to an end.
Original Article : https://ildaro.com/10075
[1] Translator’s note: In South Korea, this deposit can be very large—50
times the monthly rent or more. The country also has jeonse, a system
under which the renter gives the landlord control of an even larger amount of
money for the lease period instead of paying monthly rent.
[2] Translator’s note: During his tenure, Yoon Suk Yeol moved the
presidential office from another district to Yongsan, about two kilometers from
the edge of Dongja-dong.
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