It has been found that the Korea Housing and Urban Guarantee Corporation (HUG) has yet to recover about 5 trillion won of the jeonse deposit refunds it paid on behalf of bad landlords.

According to data submitted by HUG to the office of Representative Kim Eun-hye of the People Power Party, a member of the National Assembly's Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee, HUG paid 7.3866 trillion won in jeonse deposits on behalf of 2,559 habitual defaulters, yet failed to recover 5.1241 trillion won of that amount.

This cumulative figure—which includes reimbursements made prior to 2021—was recorded as of August 31, with the unrecovered amount averaging 2 billion won per bad landlord.

Debts that have remained uncollected for over three years reached 1.3941 trillion won across all debtors.

Of this, 5620 billion won remains as unsecured debt even after going through auction and public sale procedures, prompting HUG to state that it has outsourced the collection process to credit information companies.

However, it was confirmed that the funds recovered through debt collection delegation amounted to only about 100 million won across 29 cases from February to August.

While HUG has been disclosing the names, ages, addresses, and debt statuses of certain bad landlords following deliberation, the effectiveness of this measure remains in question.

A cumulative total of 2,565 individuals have been disclosed so far, but only 6 people have been removed from the list after repaying their debts in full. The amount they repaid stood at 4.99 billion won, which is less than 0.1 percent of the unrecovered amount.

Consequently, criticisms are rising that unrecovered funds are ultimately being plugged with public tax money.

Government contributions to HUG over the past five years have reached 6.4 trillion won. While not all of this has been used to cover jeonse deposit losses, the structural reality is that if HUG fails to recover the deposits, the shortfall must eventually be filled with taxpayers' money.

Representative Kim Eun-hye urged, "This is an irresponsible waste of taxpayers' money and a breakdown of discipline," adding, "HUG must promptly establish separate recovery targets and management plans for bad landlords' debts."

Reported by Park Se-won | Video by Na Hong-hee | Graphics by Yang Hye-min | Produced by SBS Digital News