A Constitutional Study on Legal Issues in Living Accommodation Facilities
Authors:   Korean Public Land Law Association, Lee Kwang-Won , Kim Sang-Kyum 
Published: November 2023

In Korea, a house is meaningful as a basic place in people's lives. People put all their effort into purchasing housing that is equivalent to food, clothing, and shelter. For that reason, in our country, the price of real estate, especially housing, fluctuates depending on people's needs over time. Korea has achieved economic development through industrialization, but with the urban concentration phenomenon and the rapid increase in urban housing demand, housing supply and demand has become an important national task.
Economic development brought about changes in residential culture, giving rise to various housing types, with the emergence of single-family homes, townhouses, and apartment-type apartment complexes. However, as it could not cope with the overwhelming demand, officetel, a combination of an office and a hotel, which was popular abroad, was introduced. This officetel was also resolved after the Oran controversy by separating officetels for office use and residential use. Similar to this issue, controversy arose over residential lodging facilities, which are residential-type lodging facilities.
Accommodation facilities are for people to stay for a short period of time, and there are various types. Among them, there are condos where you can stay for a while and cook, but most of them are short-term lodging facilities. Then, the form of residential accommodation emerged as a way to solve the problem of surplus accommodation and insufficient housing in cities. Living accommodation facilities, which began in the early 21st century, were initially used for long-term stays like officetels, with cooking facilities installed, and used for residential purposes.
Living accommodation facilities are lodging facilities, but as people live there for a long period of time, they are used like houses, and their number gradually increases. However, because there was no legal basis, it spread indiscriminately, and from the public's perspective, it came to be perceived as purchasing housing at a low price. It was only in 2012 that living accommodation facilities gained their basis in the Enforcement Decree of the Public Sanitation Management Act. However, living accommodations were only a type of accommodation and not housing.
Since the legal basis for living accommodation facilities is that only one type of accommodation facility is specified in the Enforcement Decree of the Public Health Management Act, there are no regulations regarding this, so in reality, they are continuously built and sold. Meanwhile, in 2020, the legal status of residential lodging facilities, a type of lodging facility, became an issue, and issues began to be raised about the fact that these facilities were being used for residential purposes rather than lodging facilities. As a result, it became a problem as it was regulated through a two-year transition provision.
Living accommodation facilities are equivalent to housing for citizens who live there. This will not be resolved by postponing administrative dispositions for two years and an additional year without fundamentally resolving the issue. Rather than allowing people who purchased it for residential purposes to change its use to officetel, which is impossible, we need to find appropriate standards that fit the reality, guarantee property rights, and protect trust. Therefore, we need to actively work to guarantee the basic rights of people who are users of living accommodation facilities. There must be action.