Korea’s statutory lease renewal right has been explained endlessly since it arrived in 2020, and yet almost nobody publishes how often tenants actually use it. No amount of reading the statute answers that question. But the rental filing data carries the answer as a field. Every reported lease says whether it is a new contract or a renewal, and if it is a renewal, whether the tenant invoked the statutory right.
So we counted. On 11 August 2026 we pulled the Ministry of Land rental transaction data for five districts and took all 7,719 filings for contracts dated June 2026. The result fits in one line: of 2,635 renewals, 957 carried the renewal-right marker — 36.3%. The other two in three were renewed without the right ever being played.
1. How often is it used? One renewal in three (36.3%, our own calculation). Against all 7,719 filings it is 12.4%, because renewals themselves are only 34.1% of everything reported.
2. Where does it split? By housing type — apartments 38.4%, officetels 32.0%, row houses and multiplexes 31.5%, detached and multi-family houses 27.5%. Same statute, nearly 11 points apart.
3. What changes if you use it? The renewed lease is deemed to be on the same terms as the previous one, with rent and deposit adjustable only within the range of article 7 (art. 6-3(3)). That range, in article 7(2), is one twentieth — 5%.
What exactly we counted
A number is only worth trusting if its boundaries are stated first. These figures are five districts and one month, not a national statistic.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Data | Ministry of Land rental transaction filings, four datasets (apartments, officetels, row/multiplex, detached/multi-family) |
| Districts | Seoul Jongno-gu and Gangnam-gu, Seongnam Bundang-gu, Busan Haeundae-gu, Gwangju Buk-gu |
| Contract month | Contracts signed in June 2026 |
| Records retrieved | 7,719 — paged through to the reported total, the complete set |
| Renewals | 2,635 (contract type reads “renewal”) |
| Renewal right marked | 957 (the renewal-right field reads “used”) |
| Usage rate | 36.3% (957 ÷ 2,635, our own calculation) |
Stop counting early and the number lies. Our first pass took only the first page of the response and read 53%. Widening the sample moved it to 46%. Only after paging all the way to the reported total did it settle at 38.4% for apartments. A truncated sample tilts. This upstream returns records in a fixed order, so the first few pages over-represent one kind of contract. Every figure in this article was counted after retrieving the full set.
Housing type is where it splits
| Type | Rate | Filings | Renewals | Right used |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apartments | 38.4% | 4,109 | 1,911 | 733 |
| Officetels | 32.0% | 1,394 | 319 | 102 |
| Row / multiplex | 31.5% | 968 | 267 | 84 |
| Detached / multi-family | 27.5% | 1,248 | 138 | 38 |
| Total | 36.3% | 7,719 | 2,635 | 957 |
The more striking column is not the rate but how many contracts are renewals at all. For apartments, 1,911 of 4,109 filings — 46.5% are renewals. For detached and multi-family houses it is 138 of 1,248, 11.1%. Detached housing renews far less often to begin with, and within those few renewals the right is invoked less often too. The gap compounds.
Why, this data cannot say. Length of residence, the kind of landlord, local re-contracting habits — none of that is a reported field. The outcome is clear enough: the right is a tool that apartment tenants reach for far more. Why deposit structures differ so much by housing type is worked through in jeonse versus monthly rent and the semi-jeonse guide.
What the statute actually grants is “may not refuse”
Housing Lease Protection Act, article 6-3 (1) Notwithstanding article 6, where a tenant requests renewal within the period in the first sentence of article 6(1), the lessor shall not refuse without justifiable grounds. Provided that this shall not apply where any of the following applies:
… 8. Where the lessor (including the lessor’s lineal ascendants and descendants) intends to actually reside in the housing …
(2) A tenant may exercise the renewal right under paragraph (1) only once. In such case, the duration of the renewed lease shall be deemed two years.
(3) The renewed lease shall be deemed re-contracted on the same terms as the previous lease. Provided that rent and deposit may be increased or decreased within the range of article 7.
Note the shape of it. The statute does not hand the tenant a power to renew; it places a duty on the landlord not to refuse — and then carves nine exceptions into that duty. The one that dominates practice is ground 8, actual residence, and the part people rarely notice is the parenthesis: lineal ascendants and descendants are included. The landlord does not have to move in personally. A parent or an adult child moving in falls squarely within the ground.
“Only once” sitting next to “deemed two years” matters as well. This right is consumable. Play it and you have two protected years; when those end, the same card cannot be played again. So renewing by agreement instead of invoking it is not automatically the weaker move — reading all 1,678 agreed renewals we counted as tenants who were pushed around would be a mistake.
Invoke it and 5% comes with it
Housing Lease Protection Act, article 7 (1) A party may request an increase or decrease for the future where the agreed rent or deposit has become inappropriate … Provided that an increase shall not be requested within one year of the lease contract or of the last agreed increase.
(2) A request for an increase under paragraph (1) shall not exceed one twentieth of the agreed rent. Provided that a Special Metropolitan City, Metropolitan City, Special Self-Governing City, Do or Special Self-Governing Do may, considering local rental market conditions within its jurisdiction, set a different ceiling on increase requests by ordinance within the scope of the main clause.
| Item | Content | Provision |
|---|---|---|
| Increase ceiling | One twentieth of agreed rent = 5% | art. 7(2) |
| Interval | Not within one year of the contract or the last increase | art. 7(1) proviso |
| Local variation | A city or province may set it lower by ordinance | art. 7(2) proviso |
| Deposit to rent conversion | Lower of 10% a year and base rate plus 2 points | art. 7-2 |
One misreading is common here. The figure “5%” does not appear in the statute — “one twentieth” does. And the proviso lets a city or province set a different ceiling within the scope of the main clause, which reads as power to lower it, not to raise it. The ordinance where the property sits is worth one search.
If part of the deposit is being converted into monthly rent, article 7-2 applies on top. That ceiling moves with the Bank of Korea base rate, and the arithmetic is laid out in the deposit-to-rent converter.
Claiming to move in and then letting to someone else
Housing Lease Protection Act, article 6-3 (5) Where a lessor has refused renewal on the ground in paragraph (1) subparagraph 8 and nonetheless, before the expiry of the period for which the lease would have been renewed had the request not been refused, leases the housing to a third party without justifiable grounds, the lessor shall compensate the tenant …
(6) Damages under paragraph (5) shall be the largest of the following amounts …
1. An amount equivalent to three months of the monthly rent at the time of refusal (where there is a deposit in addition to rent, including the amount obtained by converting that deposit into monthly rent at the lower of the ratios in article 7-2; hereinafter “converted monthly rent”)
2. An amount equivalent to two years of the difference between the converted monthly rent the lessor obtains from the third party and the converted monthly rent at the time of refusal
3. The actual loss suffered by the tenant as a result of the refusal on that ground
The most practical thing in this provision is that “converted monthly rent” is defined right here. A pure jeonse lease has zero monthly rent, and damages do not therefore fall to zero. The deposit is converted to a monthly figure at the lower article 7-2 ratio, and three months of that is the first measure. A jeonse tenant who moved out because the landlord said they were moving in, only to see a new tenant two months later, is not looking at zero because there was no rent.
Subparagraph 2 works differently again. Two years of the extra rent the landlord now collects is a calculation aimed at stripping out the gain from refusing. All three are computed and the largest governs.
What these numbers can and cannot say
What they can say. Across five districts and one month, 36.3% of renewals were filed with the renewal-right marker. By housing type that runs from 27.5% to 38.4%. And renewals themselves are 34.1% of all filings.
What they cannot. This is not a national figure. We chose the five districts, and while they mix central Seoul, Gangnam, a satellite new town, Busan and Gwangju, a sample is not a population. Nor does an unmarked renewal mean “the tenant wanted the right and was denied it” — when both sides agree, there is no reason to reach for it.
Filings also arrive late. Under the Real Estate Transaction Report Act the most recent two months are columns still filling in, which is why we counted June contracts in August. To run the same query yourself, the live data page lets you change the district and contract month and press the button.
| 단지 · 전용면적 (계약일 최신순) | 거래금액 |
|---|
Where readers usually get stuck
Does renewing by agreement use up the one exercise?
The statute does not say. Article 6-3(2) states only that the right “may be exercised only once”. Whether an agreed renewal consumes that one exercise cannot be settled from the text, so we will not assert it. The 1,678 filings we counted that read “renewal” with no renewal-right marker are exactly this population.
Does the 5% cap apply to the deposit too?
Article 7 puts “rent or deposit” together and caps “one twentieth of the agreed rent”. On the text, the deposit sits inside the same ceiling. Whether a simultaneous adjustment of both is assessed in combination is not addressed, and we could not verify it.
Does the right survive a change of landlord?
Article 6-3 binds “the lessor”, and article 3(4) of the same Act deems a transferee of the leased housing to have succeeded to the lessor’s position. On the text, the successor carries the same duty. The complication is that the ground-8 residence test is then assessed against the new owner, which is where disputes actually start. The order for protecting a deposit is set out in the tenant protection guide.
What should you do first on receiving a refusal?
Get the stated ground in writing. The damages claim in paragraph (5) is built on “refused on the ground in subparagraph 8, then let to a third party”, so if the ground was never recorded there is nothing to hang the claim on later. Signals that the deposit itself is at risk are collected in the jeonse fraud guide.
Having a right and using a right are two different facts. The filing data is the first place the gap between them shows up as a number.
Sources
- Korea Ministry of Government Legislation — statute text — Housing Lease Protection Act (in force 2 January 2026, Act no. 21065). Article 6-3 — the nine grounds in paragraph (1), “only once” and “deemed two years” in (2), “same terms” in (3), and the damages rules and the definition of converted monthly rent in (5) and (6) — read directly from the text.
- Korea Ministry of Government Legislation — statute text — Article 7 of the same Act. Source for “one twentieth”, the one-year interval, and the proviso allowing a city or province to set a different ceiling by ordinance.
- Korea Ministry of Land — Real Transaction Price Disclosure System — disclosure notice. The 7,719 records here were pulled from the ministry’s rental transaction datasets behind the same system (apartments, row/multiplex, detached and officetel) on 11 August 2026. Contract type and renewal-right usage are returned fields.
- Korea Ministry of Government Legislation — statute text — Real Estate Transaction Report Act. The basis for the statement that recent contracts arrive late, and the reason June contracts were counted in August.
Where to check further
- Whether an agreed renewal consumes the one exercise. Not resolvable from the text — the Housing Lease Dispute Conciliation Committee and the Korea Legal Aid Corporation (132) advise free of charge.
- The increase-ceiling ordinance where you live. Article 7(2) allows cities and provinces to set their own — a search for “rent” in your city or province’s ordinance database settles it either way.
- The rate in your own district. This article counted five — the live data page takes a district code and a contract month so you can run the same count yourself.
Written as at August 2026. All quoted provisions are the statute text as published by the Ministry of Government Legislation, and the 7,719-record tally is our own, pulled in full on 11 August 2026. It covers five districts and one month and is not a national figure. Because of the filing deadline the most recent months keep filling in, so the same query run later will return more records. This is general information, not legal advice.
