Housing Subscription Accounts for Foreigners? Pushed to Sign Up Despite Being Virtually Unusable

[Anchor]

Over the past five years, commercial banks have been found to have sold more than 1.1 million housing subscription products to foreign nationals. Criticisms are mounting that banks, in a rush to meet sales targets, pushed these accounts onto foreigners who can barely use them, skipping proper product explanations.

Reporter Go Jeong-hyeon reports exclusively.

[Reporter]

Three years ago, when A, a Philippine national, was a high school student, she went to a bank to obtain a balance certificate for college admissions and ended up opening a housing subscription savings account on the spot.

[A / Philippine National: "(The bank teller) glossed over it, just saying, 'It's good to sign up for this.' Later, when I checked on my phone, I saw that a housing subscription account had been created."]

About 20,000 won was automatically transferred each month, but she belatedly realized after talking with friends that it was an unnecessary product and canceled it.

[A / Philippine National: "Older female friends who are also foreigners told me, 'It's useless, and you won't be able to use it even if you have it,' so (I canceled it)."]

A civic organization supporting foreign residents in South Korea stated that such cases are widespread.

[Jeong Yu-rim / Labor Human Rights Center: "There are many people who have just arrived a few months ago, who are not fluent in Korean and are unfamiliar with Korean systems, and there are many cases where they signed up for housing subscription accounts without even knowing what the subscription system is..."]

From 2022 to the first half of this year, the five major commercial banks sold more than 1.15 million housing subscription products to foreign nationals.

However, during the same period, only 90 cases resulted in winning an apartment allocation.

The winning rate is so low because, from a foreigner's standpoint, housing subscription accounts are virtually useless.

Under the Resident Registration Act, foreign nationals are not recognized as household members, making them ineligible to apply for special supply quotas for both public and private housing. Furthermore, in the general supply quotas for private housing, they cannot apply for first-tier priority in regulated areas.

While they can apply for second-tier priority or lower in regulated areas, or in non-regulated areas, the scoring requirements to earn additional points are extremely difficult for foreigners to meet.

Given this situation, the early cancellation rate of housing subscription accounts among foreigners over the past five years neared 50%, with 27% canceling within one year of signing up.

[Park Hong-bae / Member of National Assembly National Policy Committee (Democratic Party of Korea): "This is a classic case of mis-selling and excessive competition, where customers were urged to sign up for a product that effectively offers no practical benefit."]

Banks maintain that they recommended the product because, even for foreigners, it offers relatively higher interest rates compared to regular deposit products.

(Video by Kim Hak-mo and Kim Yong-woo | Video Editing by Park Seon-soo | Graphics by JUNHO)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.