Has anyone experienced personal bankruptcy in South Korea?

February 16, 2023 3:11 PM

Has anyone experienced personal bankruptcy in South Korea? And willing to talk to me about the experience? I'm trying to help an elderly relative explore bankruptcy as an option but he's against it. He says it makes it impossible to live, dealing with landlords and banks afterwards. But he can't give me specifics. He speaks mainly Korean, and I speak mostly English. I'm hoping someone who speaks english might be able to fill me in. I can't seem to find anything online beyond that it's hard to start new lines of credit.
posted by nerdpita to Law & Government (2 answers total)

If you don't get the answers you're looking for here, maybe try /r/korea/ on Reddit...
posted by wowenthusiast at 5:49 PM on February 16, 2023

1. If you're trying Reddit, r/hanguk is more likely to have Koreans who actually live in Korea and have experienced issues of living in Korea (my impression of r/Korea is that it's dominated by foreigners living in Korea and so their experiences are different, especially if they're in Korea only temporarily and/or don't speak the language).
2. "I can't seem to find anything online" - if you're using Google to try to find English language information, it's going to be tough. Doing a search on Naver with the term 개인파산 will turn up a lot of results, including results from Naver's Q&A platform 지식iN, as well as official government information. This will all be in Korean. From the Korean perspective, there's no pressing reason to provide this type of information in English, as it's primarily relevant to Koreans in Korea.
3. That said, you might try reaching out to law school legal clinics. From that list, I'd suggest starting out with Yonsei University, Sogang University, or Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, based on likelihood of having English speakers and providing an email address for inquiries.

posted by needled at 5:42 AM on February 17, 2023