Someone Owes You Money in Korea

A friend borrowed for a “temporary” emergency two years ago. A business partner took your share and went quiet. A customer received the goods and stopped answering. The Korean legal system has a well-worn road for all of these — but it is a road with stages, and people lose money not because the tools are missing but because they start at the wrong stage or stop halfway.

The framework is the Civil Execution Act (민사집행법)working together with the civil-procedure tools this site’s litigation guides cover: the demand letter, the payment order, the lawsuit. What this guide adds is the map that connects them — and the part most people have never heard of: how to make a debtor who says “I have nothing” prove it under oath.

1. The two questions that come first

Is the claim alive? Every debt expires — 10 years for an ordinary private loan, 5 where the deal was commercial, 3 for wages and many working debts. If time has passed, start with Statutes of Limitations before spending anything: the clock decides how urgent the rest of this guide is, and a debtor’s partial payment or written acknowledgment can restart it.

Can they pay?A judgment against someone with no seizable assets collects nothing by itself. Before committing to the road, be honest about what you know: a salary, a business that still trades, a jeonse deposit, a car, real estate. You do not need to know everything — section 4 is about making the court find out — but if the answer is clearly “nothing, and no prospects,” the economics in What Litigation Costs deserve a hard look first.

Alongside both questions, gather the record: the loan agreement or IOU if one exists, but also bank transfer records, KakaoTalk and text messages, invoices, delivery records. Korean money cases are decided on documents, and an informal debt with a clean transfer trail is far stronger than people fear.

2. The recovery map

1. 1

   Demand, on the record

   A certified content mail letter stating the debt, a deadline, and what follows. Many debts are paid at this step — and the letter holds the limitation clock for 6 months while you prepare the next one.
2. 2

   Freeze first if assets may vanish

   Where the debtor could sell or move assets once warned, a provisional attachment (가압류) can freeze property before or alongside the main case. Where that risk is real, this step comes before the demand letter, not after.
3. 3

   Get a court title

   A finalized payment order for debts the debtor does not seriously dispute; the small-claims track up to ₩30,000,000; an ordinary lawsuit where the debt is contested. This is the document everything after depends on.
4. 4

   Make the assets visible

   Court-ordered asset disclosure under oath, direct inquiries to banks and registries, and the defaulters' list — the machinery of section 4.
5. 5

   Enforce

   Seize what the search found: bank accounts, wages, deposits, vehicles, real estate. Enforcement is its own procedure with its own costs, and a title is good for 10 years — patience is a strategy.

Not every case walks every step. An employer who owes wages answers to the labour office’s separate machinery first — see Unpaid Wages. A debtor with a salary and a reputation often pays at the demand or title stage. The sequence exists for the debtor who does not.

3. Getting your court title

The title stage is covered in depth elsewhere on this site, so here is only the choice. For a documented debt the debtor does not seriously contest, the payment order is the default: a tenth of the lawsuit’s filing fee, no hearing, and judgment force if the debtor stays silent for 2 weeks. For a contested debt, the lawsuit — small-claims track up to ₩30,000,000 — is the honest route, because a contested payment order just detours into one anyway.

One planning point: the title stage is also where the demand letter’s 6-month window matters. If the letter was doing the work of holding the limitation clock, the filing must land inside that window or the protection is lost.

4. Finding the assets: disclosure, inquiry, the defaulters’ list

This is the stage foreigners rarely know exists — and the reason “I have no money” is not the end of the conversation. Once you hold a title good for money enforcement, three court tools open up.

Asset disclosure (jaesan myeongsi) (재산명시). On your application, the court orders the debtor to appear and submit a sworn list of their assets (Civil Execution Act art. 61). The oath has teeth: failing to appear, refusing to submit the list, or refusing the oath can be punished with detention of up to 20 days, and submitting a false list is a crime carrying up to 3 years’ imprisonment or a fine (art. 68). Many debtors who shrugged at the judgment become cooperative when the summons arrives.

After the disclosure step, the court itself can query banks, insurers, and registries for assets in the debtor’s name — you do not have to find them alone.

Property inquiry (jaesan johoe) (재산조회). Where disclosure fails or the list looks thin, the creditor who ran the disclosure procedure can ask the court to query financial institutions and public registries directly — banks, insurers, securities firms, the real-estate and vehicle registers — for assets held in the debtor’s name (art. 74). Institutions cannot refuse without just cause. This is how hidden accounts surface.

The defaulters’ list (chaemu burihaengja myeongbu) (채무불이행자명부). If the debtor still has not paid 6 months after the title became final, you can apply to have them entered on the court’s defaulters’ register (art. 70), which feeds into credit information systems. It collects nothing directly — but for a debtor who wants loans, cards, or a normal financial life, it is steady pressure that costs you little.

5. “Isn’t this fraud?” — the criminal question

Almost everyone who is owed money asks it. The honest answer: borrowing money and then failing to repay is, by itself, a civil matter. Fraud (사기) under the Criminal Act (art. 347) turns on deception at the time of the deal — a debtor who never intended or never had the means to repay, and concealed it. A debtor whose circumstances genuinely collapsed afterwards has broken a promise, not the criminal law.

Where the facts do point to deception from the start — invented investments, borrowed “bridge money” against assets that never existed, the same money borrowed from several people with the same story — a criminal complaint can run alongside the civil claim, and the pressure of an investigation often produces repayment settlements. Whether your facts cross that line is precisely the judgment to have assessed before filing anything.

6. Common mistakes

• Waiting politely while the clock runs.Years of “next month” promises spend the limitation period. Sympathy and a filed payment order can coexist.
• Restructuring with nothing in writing.If you agree to installments or a delay, put the debt’s full amount and the new schedule in a signed document — it is evidence, and it restarts the limitation clock as an acknowledgment.
• Suing first, thinking about assets never. The title is the middle of the road, not the end. Budget from the start for the disclosure and enforcement stages, or the judgment becomes a certificate of being right.
• Warning a flight-risk debtor. A demand letter tells the debtor to move assets exactly as clearly as it tells them to pay. Where that risk is real, freezing comes first.
• Outsourcing to whoever promises the most.Debt collection in Korea is regulated; only licensed credit-information companies may run collection as a business, and aggressive freelance “collectors” can turn your lawful claim into their unlawful conduct. For the court road, the sequence in this guide is the lawful machinery.

Start with the record you already hold — the transfers, the messages, the dates — and the two questions of section 1. Everything else on the map follows from them.

Frequently asked questions

Written by Attorney Chulho Choi (SOL & LUNA / Law Firm Myeong, KBA-registered specialist in Civil and Criminal Law). Reviewed as of August 2026. Updated when laws change.