Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Brendon Carr]

Mr. Foreigner, be aware that if you buy an apartment it comes with a fractional ownership of the land underlying your place � and under the Foreigners' Land Acquisition Management Act (FLAMA) you are obligated to make a pro-forma report to the local district (shi/gun/gu) office within 60 days of concluding your purchase agreement.

Except where you're buying near a Korean military base, a cultural property, or some other special area, the FLAMA report is not an approval or anything like that (mainly a nuisance, like the useless vestigial wings of an ostrich), but negligent failure to make the FLAMA report comes with a fine of several million won.

Your local realtor is not going to know this little detail, because so few of his customers are going to be non-Koreans. The district office may not know either � be prepared to be insistent (but polite). It's a one-page form and once they figure out what it's about the government employees will be glad to help you puzzle through it.

FLAMA also applies in cases where a Korean who owns land surrenders his/her citizenship but continues to own the property, or where a non-Korean (or former Korean) citizen comes to inherit land from a Korean decedent.