The collapse of the long-term lease system has left many Koreans exposed to unexpected risks. In an interview with Slow News, Choi Kyung-ho discusses how social housing might change that.
In South Korea, housing is not merely shelter; it is status, obsession, and for many, the axis around which life itself revolves. The country’s signature jeonse lease system, with long-term deposits paid to the owner in exchange for rent-free occupancy, with the original deposit repaid at the end of the term after having been invested elsewhere by the owner, once seemed a brilliant financial workaround in a high-priced market. But as Choi Kyung-ho, author of Maybe, Social Housing (2024), argues in his interview with Minno for Slow News, the system was always a fragile construct, dependent on the promise of endlessly rising real-estate prices. Once the market wavered, tenants’ deposits became vulnerable, fraud proliferated and homes became associated with financial risk rather than security.
Choi’s verdict is blunt: jeonse has reached the end of its life. And yet, from this twilight, he sees a faint but vital dawn: social housing. The “maybe” in his book title is not mere humility: it is a reflection of Korea’s reality, where social housing represents less than 0.1 percent of total housing stock, compared to 30 percent in the Netherlands or 25 percent in Austria. In the interview, Choi insists that its potential lies not in volume but in philosophy: housing conceived as a social good, rather than a speculative asset.
The conversation reads like a meditation on desire itself. In Korea, a home represents class, identity, even destiny. Where one bought an apartment in the 1990s can still define one’s social position decades later. Choi observes that politicians, intellectuals and citizens alike bow before the altar of real estate, often in ways both absurd and tragic. The interview recalls a notorious statement from a former minister: “I just love the land,” a remark derided at the time yet revealing of a national truth. Choi argues that this fervour, so deeply embedded, makes social housing a radical proposition, not simply a policy intervention, but a cultural one.
What, exactly, is social housing? Choi is precise: it is housing that “realises social value,” created by social enterprises, cooperatives and community organisations that balance financial sustainability with communal purpose. In Europe, such models are mainstream, with familiar labels like “Housing for All” in Denmark. Choi’s own coinage, Dure Housing, harks back to Korea’s pre-colonial cooperative traditions, imagining a network of shared responsibility and mutual aid restored to the modern housing sector.
Yet the interview is far from utopian. Choi candidly recounts the practical obstacles: disputes among residents, noise conflicts, requests for neighbours to leave, and even construction defects. Social housing, he notes, is not magically immune to human quarrels or material failure. Moreover, the sector lacks public support; its official budget is literally zero, forcing providers to cobble together resources from adjacent programs. Compared to the extraordinary privileges once extended to private developers, land expropriation rights, tax incentives and generous financing, social housing operates at a severe disadvantage. Collaboration with the state is inevitable, Choi argues, but autonomy is equally essential if social housing is to cultivate its own identity.
The interview also explores lessons from abroad. While Dutch, Austrian or Danish models cannot be transplanted wholesale, Choi believes Korea can adapt elements such as long-term, low-interest financing and cooperative governance. More importantly, Korea must nurture its own cultural and historical traditions of communal living, even if those roots were disrupted by colonial history.
Why persist in this fragile experiment? Choi’s answer is simple and disarming: because desire builds markets, but hope builds worlds. Jeonse embodied desire; raw, speculative, corrosive. Social housing embodies hope; the hope of living together differently, of making shelter a source of community rather than profit. The interview portrays social housing not as a cure-all, but as a seed of possibility in Korea’s darkest housing landscape.
For anyone fatigued by news of skyrocketing rents, endless speculation, and systemic inequities, Choi’s reflections offer more than policy prescriptions, they offer a vision. Even a “maybe,” he insists, can point toward a dawn.
Original article (“전세의 황혼, 사회주택의 새벽”) by Minno was first published in Korean on 4 June 2025.
It is available here.
Slow News, founded in 2014, is an alternative media outlet dedicated to exploring the structure and essence of news, going beyond the rush of breaking headlines. With over 500 contributors, it produces in-depth analysis, context-rich reporting and solutions-oriented journalism, while fostering open discussion and debate.
