Almost every enquiry that arrives too late arrives with the same sentence attached: I wanted to see whether it would resolve itself first. The wage that was going to be paid next month. The deposit the landlord promised to return. The assault charge the other side said they would drop.
Korean law puts a deadline on nearly all of it. Some of those deadlines are years long and some are measured in weeks, and they do not run from the moment you decide to act. They run from an earlier date — usually the date the problem became apparent — which means the clock has often been running for some time before anyone thinks about it.
What follows is a map of the main ones. It is not a substitute for checking the deadline that applies to your particular claim, because the general rule is frequently displaced by a shorter special rule.
→Civil Claims: Extinctive Prescription (소멸시효)
A civil claim that is not pursued within its period can no longer be enforced. The general period is ten years, but a great many of the claims foreign residents actually bring fall under shorter special periods.
| Claim | Period |
|---|---|
| General civil claims — including a lease deposit (임차보증금) against a landlord | 10 years |
| Commercial claims — between businesses, or arising from a commercial transaction | 5 years |
| Tort claims (불법행위) — assault, fraud, accident damage | 3 years from learning of the damage and the person responsible, and 10 years from the act |
| Wages, severance pay (퇴직금), and other pay claims | 3 years |
| Short-period claims — professional fees, construction claims, and periodic payments | 3 years |
| Accommodation, restaurant, and similar day-to-day charges | 1 year |
Two features of the tort (불법행위) rule deserve attention because they trap people regularly. The three-year period runs from knowledge, not from the event, which occasionally helps — damage discovered late. The ten-year period runs from the act regardless of knowledge, which never does.
→Stopping the Clock
A period can be interrupted, and interruption resets it rather than pausing it. Three things achieve this.
- Judicial claim. Filing suit, applying for a payment order (지급명령), or filing in a small claims procedure. This is the reliable method
- Provisional attachment or injunction (가압류·가처분). Freezing an asset interrupts the period and secures the claim at the same time
- Acknowledgement (승인). The debtor admitting the debt. A message saying "I'll pay you next month" is worth keeping — it can be worth years
A demand letter, including a content-certified letter (내용증명), does not interrupt the period on its own. It buys a six-month window in which a judicial claim must be brought to make the interruption effective. Sending one and then waiting is the single most common way people lose a claim they had every right to bring.
A content-certified letter (내용증명) is a starting gun, not a stop button.
→Criminal Matters: Prosecution Time Limits (공소시효)
Criminal liability also expires, and the period is set by the maximum sentence available for the offence rather than by the offence's name.
| Maximum Penalty for the Offence | Period |
|---|---|
| Death | 25 years |
| Life imprisonment | 15 years |
| Imprisonment with a maximum of 10 years or more | 10 years |
| Imprisonment with a maximum of less than 10 years | 7 years |
| Imprisonment with a maximum of less than 5 years, or a fine | 5 years |
| Detention, minor fine, or confiscation | 1 year |
There is one rule here that matters to foreign nationals more than to anyone else. The period is suspended while the suspect is outside Korea for the purpose of evading prosecution. Time spent abroad does not necessarily count, which means a person who left Korea years ago with an unresolved investigation behind them may find the matter entirely alive on their return. People discover this at Incheon immigration, which is the worst possible place to discover it.
Where you are the victim rather than the suspect, a separate and much shorter deadline can apply. For offences that require a complaint by the victim in order to be prosecuted, the complaint must generally be made within six months of learning who the offender is.
→The Short Ones
These are the deadlines that catch people, because they are counted in days and weeks while everyone is still deciding what to do.
- Unfair dismissal (부당해고) — 3 months. An application to the Labour Relations Commission must be made within three months of the dismissal. Miss it and the commission route closes, leaving only a court claim on narrower ground
- Administrative decisions — 90 days. Immigration refusals, tax assessments, and other administrative dispositions, running from the day you learned of the decision
- Objection to a deportation order (강제퇴거명령) — 7 days. From service of the order
- Appeal against a judgment — 7 or 14 days. Short, strict, and counted from service of the written judgment
Note that the wage claim illustrates why these categories interact. The unpaid wages themselves survive for three years as a civil claim, and non-payment is also a criminal offence — but the unfair dismissal application that might have restored the job expires in three months. Same employer, same day, three different clocks.
→What This Means in Practice
The rule that covers most situations is simple enough to state: identify the shortest deadline in play, then work backwards from it. Not the one you would prefer to rely on — the shortest.
Where a period is close to expiring and the case is not ready, the answer is usually to file something rather than to perfect the papers. An imperfect claim filed inside the period can be developed; a perfect one filed outside it cannot be heard.
And where you are leaving Korea with anything unresolved — a deposit not returned, wages not paid, an investigation not concluded — deal with it before you go or arrange for someone here to. Distance does not stop these clocks. In the criminal context, as noted above, it may not even start them running in your favour.