Forced-auction sales in Seoul climb 44% to a record 3,854 in seven months

Growth in the count has slowed each year even as the total climbs. Seoul's registrations went from 718 in 2023 to 1,492 in 2024 and 2,677 last year ^[4], then to 3,854 this year ^[1]. The annual increases come to about 108%, then 79%, then 44% ^[16]. This year's total is about 5.4 times the 2023 figure ^[17].

A registration is the last step of a slow process, and actress Seo Hyun-jin's case shows how slow. Her lease ended in April 2024 with the landlord unable to return the deposit; she registered her tenancy that September, moved out and asked for a forced auction ^[11]. The villa failed to sell three times, and the minimum bid fell into the 1.4 billion won range ^[12]. Before a fourth round in July last year, the landlord sought rehabilitation and the court halted enforcement. It resumed only after the landlord was declared bankrupt in December ^[13]. The sale came more than two years after the lease ended ^[18].

Her villa is in Gangnam-gu ^[8], outside the five districts that held two-thirds of first-half cases ^[6], and her claim is about as strong as a jeonse tenant's gets. She registered a leasehold right when she signed in April 2020 ^[10] and is reported to hold the highest-priority claim on the registry ^[15]. Her deposit, raised by 125 million won to 2,625 million won in 2022 ^[10], was about 91% of the 2,873.63 million won appraisal ^[19]. In lending terms she was a secured creditor at 91% of value (more precisely, a creditor whose only return was living there without paying monthly rent ^[3]). By the final round the minimum bid had sunk to about 51% of appraisal ^[20]. One bidder paid about 89%, roughly 1,087 million won above that floor ^[9]. The bid covers about 97.5% of her deposit ^[21], and the court's distribution will decide what she actually collects ^[15].

One reading of the record is a backlog: lease failures from 2023 and 2024 clearing through the courts, with the slowing growth rate showing it thinning. Another is a stock problem. Seoul auctions ended without a sale 16,898 times in seven months ^[22], and Seo's villa drew no bidder in three rounds ^[12]. If failed items keep returning at lower minimums, as hers did, completed sales can keep rising after new defaults ease. The third is that new defaults are still piling up in multi-unit homes, and the share of sectioned buildings rising each year since 2024 fits that view ^[5]. I think the first two carry more of the evidence, though the registry cannot rule out the third. The figures do not show how many sales tenants or HUG requested ^[2], and they count apartments, villas and officetels as one category ^[5].

The backlog reading is wrong if next year's January-to-July count rises by more than this year's 44% ^[1].