Korean Housing

Korean housing
Park Taek Sik

Korea has a peculiar system of housing which is really hard to find in other countries. A man, whichever country he may live in, wants to buy a beautiful house and live there. The first choice for living in a house is to buy a house if possible and the second choice, if not possible, is then to rent a house. In most countries, people choose to rent a house and pay for the monthly rent fee. This is the most usual way all over the world. But strangely, the second choice in Korea is something quite different from the choice in other countries. Besides this main difference concerning the rent fee payment system, there are also other differences concerning the house structure.
First, most residents in America, for example, who cannot afford to buy a house, live in a rented house while paying the monthly rent fee. On the other hand, in Korea, most people who cannot afford to buy a house live in a leased house after depositing a certain amount of money to the lessor. For example, the representative leasing of an apartment building house with three bedrooms and two bathrooms usually asks for the deposit of about $140,000 in Korea. If this deposit is satisfied, the tenant does not have to pay any further expense while living in the leased house. But this is not a small amount of money at all. So people make a loan from the bank to prepare this money. But in America, people do not need much money when making a house rent contract compared with Koreans who need much money at the beginning. And for a long time, Koreans must bear the burden of paying the money back along with the interest to the bank. In this respect, the American system seems to be more attractive. But there is another point to consider here. The Korean government allows people who need money for this purpose to borrow money from the bank on a long term with a low interest rate. And furthermore when they want to move to a better house or buy their own house, the lessor must...