@samuelszuchan: Kim Dae-seong owned 1,139 houses scattered across Seoul, and, in late 2022, his tenants were hoping he would stay alive. He held their jeonse deposits (the large deposit that, in Korea, renters pay in lieu of monthly rent), and they had taken out loans to fund much of it. The deal went like this: a tenant signed a lease with a builder, then, days later, the property would be transferred to Kim, who used the tenant's deposit to pay for it. The scheme was a kind of pyramid scheme: since every property was bought with a renter's cash, all the deposits would be safe as long as Kim could keep the scheme going. He called himself "Thousand Villas," drove a Maybach, and had a solid-gold seal that he used to stamp his contracts. In March, 2021, a panicked employee voiced concerns, and Kim texted back that the scheme was going to crash anyway, so it might as well be "after we've been paid." In June, he fell behind on his property taxes (an amount of 6.2 billion won, or about $5.4 million), and the tax authorities began seizing his tenants' homes ahead of the tenants. Kim proposed that the tenants buy back their houses, at inflated prices. One woman declined. The last message that she received from her landlord read, "I have no money." Five days later, on October 12th, 2022, he was found dead in a room in Seoul, at the age of forty-two, having died of illness before authorities could question him about the business. A dead man cannot legally receive the notice of termination that a tenant must file with a landlord in order to claim government deposit insurance, so the leases renewed automatically, no one having intended this. Kim's parents renounced their inheritance, so his tenants had to identify more than 20 possible heirs themselves, and get court orders to see his family registry. Eight months after he died, a court appointed an administrator, but this was only for the insured tenants. Investigators found that "no decision-maker above Kim existed." For many tenants, the result was ruin. They had lost their deposits but still owed the debt that they had taken on to fund them; one woman's credit score fell from eight hundred and forty-four to two hundred. It was not until April, 2026, that the government made an offer: to reimburse tenants for at least a third of their losses. They wanted half.

Sam Szuchan

Open In TikTok:

Region: US

Monday 05 October 2026 22:00:00 GMT