Seo Hyun Jin, best known for her celebrated role alongside Gong Yoo in The Trunk, has recently found herself at the center of a distressing financial and legal situation that is now drawing national attention. Her personal life has collided with South Korea’s deepening housing crisis after it was revealed that she is battling to recover a massive jeonse deposit from a failed property lease. The issue came to light after it was reported on June 2 that the actress filed for a public court auction in April 2025, following her landlord’s failure to return her jeonse deposit after her lease expired.
According to official court records, Seo Hyun Jin had entered into a lease agreement back in April 2020 for a villa in Seoul’s affluent Gangnam district. Under Korea’s unique jeonse rental system, she paid an upfront deposit of 2.50 billion KRW, roughly 1.81 million USD, instead of monthly rent. She later renewed the lease in 2022, increasing the deposit to 2.65 billion KRW, or about 1.92 million USD. However, when the lease ended in early 2024, the landlord did not return the deposit, despite Seo being legally registered as a leaseholder. With her funds frozen and no recourse available through negotiation, she resorted to initiating a court-led auction of the property in hopes of reclaiming her investment.
The situation took a grim turn when the villa was recently reclassified as a ‘kkangtong house’—a colloquial term for properties that have become virtually worthless due to excessive debt. Though originally appraised at approximately 3 billion KRW, the property failed to draw any interest in the first round of court bidding. As a result, the minimum bid has now been lowered to 2.30 billion KRW, a sum still lower than the deposit Seo had initially placed. Experts warn that the ongoing slump in South Korea’s housing market, coupled with the ballooning number of jeonse defaults, makes it unlikely that the property will regain its value anytime soon. This leaves Seo Hyun Jin in an unenviable position, facing what may amount to a severe financial blow.
When approached for comments, her agency, Management Soop, responded with restraint, stating that the matter pertains to her private life and is difficult to confirm. They declined to disclose whether she would be pursuing additional legal remedies beyond the ongoing court auction. As the actress continues to deal with this personal crisis, her situation also highlights the growing risks embedded in Korea’s jeonse system—a financial model once seen as secure, but increasingly fraught with uncertainty amid a volatile real estate market.