A Debtor Won't Pay?

Holding a judgment or a notarized deed doesn't collect a debt by itself — the actual work is finding assets to enforce against, and each enforcement tool has its own procedural traps. This guide covers the tools that come up most often once a debtor won't pay voluntarily.

Asset disclosure (재산명시신청) — the first move when you can't find anything to seize

This procedure orders a debtor to submit their own asset list to the court — real estate, bank deposits and financial assets, vehicles, receivables, and other property — under Civil Execution Act Art. 61. It requires an enforceable title (판결/집행권원): a final judgment, payment order, settlement protocol, recommendation-of-performance decision, or notarized deed, filed at the court with jurisdiction over the debtor's general venue (usually their address). Because execution-commencement requirements (Arts. 39–41) apply here too, you'll generally need the enforceable title itself, proof of service to the debtor, a certificate of finality, and the court-fee/service-fee payment record.

This is typically used when: the debtor's bank accounts are unknown, real estate ownership can't be confirmed through a private credit check (private credit-reporting agencies typically catch only 70–80% of real estate — co-owned property, recently acquired property, and rural/unmortgaged land like an inherited farm plot are commonly missed), the debtor appears to be hiding assets while stalling payment, or you need a specific target before proceeding to seizure. In practice, the disclosure order alone often creates real psychological pressure — the debtor has to appear in court and swear to an asset list under oath. Refusing to submit the list, filing a false one, or failing to appear at the disclosure hearing can lead to detention (감치) — most commonly applied once the claim exceeds roughly KRW 10 million — and also opens the door to the next step below.

When disclosure fails: asset inquiry (재산조회신청)

If the disclosure order can't even be served on the debtor — they've moved, no longer live at their registered address, or there's no one to receive service — the court issues an address-correction order, and if the creditor genuinely can't locate a serviceable address even after checking the resident registration abstract, the disclosure petition gets dismissed (각하). That dismissal, specifically for unserviceable-address reasons, is what unlocks asset inquiry under Civil Execution Act Art. 74: the court itself queries financial institutions, the National Tax Service, local governments, the National Pension Service, and similar bodies for property registered to the debtor's name — real estate, vehicles, financial assets, insurance, securities, intellectual property, and more. The creditor must specify which institutions and which asset categories to query, and pay the inquiry fee upfront — it isn't a blanket "search everything" request. Keep the disclosure case's dismissal decision and the address-correction order on hand; the court reviews whether the disclosure-stage prerequisites were actually met before granting an inquiry.

Provisional seizure release deposit and getting a seizure actually lifted

A debtor whose bank account, sale proceeds, or a specific claim is frozen under a provisional seizure (가압류) can deposit a release amount (해방공탁금) — set in the seizure decision, generally the full claimed amount or a court-set figure — to unlock it. But the deposit alone doesn't lift the seizure automatically — a common misconception. The actual sequence is: seizure decision → release deposit → execution-cancellation petition (with the deposit certificate, a copy of the seizure decision, service-fee payment, and a POA if an agent is filing) → the court's cancellation decision → service of that decision on the creditor, debtor, and the third-party obligor (the bank or counterparty actually holding the frozen funds) → the seizure is lifted only once that last service is completed. If multiple claims were seized and only one needs release, specify exactly which claim in the petition. Realistically, expect roughly 3–7 days for the cancellation decision and another 3–7 days for service on the third-party obligor — about 1–2 weeks total in practice.

Seizing and collecting from a bank account (통장 압류 추심명령)

A collection order lets a creditor collect a debtor's claim against a third-party obligor directly, without a separate assignment procedure — most commonly the debtor's own bank, which holds the deposit claim. The seizure takes legal effect the moment it's served on the bank itself — service is the execution, with no bailiff involved, since the court serves the order directly. Because creditors rarely know which bank(s) the debtor actually uses, a practical (and common) tactic is naming several likely banks — including internet-only banks — as third-party obligors and letting service determine which ones actually hold funds. The claimed amount needs to be broken out and specified per bank, and the seizure/collection description in the attached schedule needs to be precise — including the mandatory carve-out for exempt deposits/insurance proceeds under Civil Execution Act Art. 246(1)(7)-(8) and its Enforcement Decree Arts. 6–7.

Before filing, get each named bank's own corporate registry certificate (valid only if issued within the last 3 months) — needed both to state the bank's exact corporate name and representative in the petition and as a required attachment. One easily-missed attachment: the third-party obligor statement — the bank has no legal duty to disclose the debtor's deposit balance, but including this form lets the court issue the collection order without a correction order, considerably speeding things up.

Property-transfer-prohibition injunction (점유이전금지가처분) — before filing an eviction lawsuit

Evicting a problem tenant requires this injunction first, to prevent the property from changing hands mid-litigation. The process runs in three stages: (1) filing — the underlying right being preserved is the right to demand possession (인도청구권); attach proof of the lease's formation and termination (a certified notice is standard), a floor plan if the target is part of a shared floor, and ideally a valuation of the target property to preempt a correction request; (2) a security-bond order — for a lease-termination case, the property's value is calculated as (deposit + monthly rent × 100), and the court typically orders a bond of 5–10% of that value (one of our own cases was set at 5%); (3) execution — once the two certified copies of the injunction decision are issued, take them immediately to the court bailiff's office to commission execution; filing within 14 days isn't enough — the bailiff must actually commence execution (appear on-site and post the public notice) within that window. Documents needed at the bailiff's office: the enforcement petition, 2 copies of the injunction decision, a POA, ID, and a cost deposit (roughly KRW 150,000–200,000) — with an additional locksmith fee if the property is locked and unoccupied at the time.

Recovering a claim from a trading partner now in corporate rehabilitation

Discovering your counterparty entered corporate rehabilitation (법인회생) after you already extended services or credit isn't necessarily fatal to recovery — the key distinction is when the claim arose. A claim arising after the rehabilitation commencement decision is a 공익채권 (administrative/estate claim), not an ordinary 회생채권 (rehabilitation claim) — and the difference matters enormously: a 회생채권 only gets paid per the court-approved repayment ratio in the rehabilitation plan, while a 공익채권 can be paid anytime, with priority, under Debtor Rehabilitation and Bankruptcy Act Art. 179 (rehabilitation) or Art. 473 (bankruptcy).

A 공익채권 isn't subject to the formal claim-filing procedure (no claim-list submission, no filing-period deadline) that ordinary rehabilitation/bankruptcy claims require. What's called "공익채권 신고" in practice isn't a formal legal filing at all — it's notifying the receiver (관리인) or bankruptcy trustee that this claim qualifies as a 공익채권 and requesting payment, by submitting a claim assertion, the underlying contract/invoice/payroll record, and the date and legal basis for when the claim arose. If the receiver disputes the classification, a 공익채권확인소송 (declaratory action) or a straightforward performance lawsuit is available, and — unlike ordinary rehabilitation claims — individual enforcement against a recognized 공익채권 is possible regardless of whether the rehabilitation plan has been approved yet, though it's worth confirming whether a comprehensive stay order is in effect before pursuing that route.

When a defendant can't be served — small claims and public notice service (공시송달)

Repeated failed service attempts (nobody home, addressee unknown, moved without notice) on a small-claims defendant can lead the court to order 공시송달 (service by public notice) on its own authority — the case then proceeds even though the defendant never actually received the complaint. Two timing details matter: under the Civil Procedure Act, the first public-notice service takes effect only 2 weeks after it's carried out, while subsequent public-notice service to the same party takes effect the day after. And because a defendant who genuinely never knew about the case can still file a supplementary appeal (추완항소) within 2 weeks of when the reason for missing the original deadline disappears, a public-notice judgment always carries some risk of being reopened later — plan around that possibility rather than treating the judgment as final the moment it's issued.

In practice, a plaintiff typically has to help correct the defendant's address first (checking the resident registration abstract, business registration address, contract address, and certified-mail delivery history) before the court will order public notice. Once public notice takes effect, a hearing date gets set, and since the defendant usually never learns about the case and doesn't appear, the court decides based solely on the plaintiff's own submissions — contracts, transaction records, deposit records, certified notices, text messages, tax invoices, loan agreements. This makes the plaintiff's own claim organization and evidence more important, not less, in a public-notice case — the court still has to find the claim itself clearly established, even with no opposition.