About 1,400 children aged 5 or younger own homes in South Korea, according to government data.
Rep. Jeon Yong-gi of the Democratic Party of Korea, a member of the National Assembly's Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee, released the findings on the 16th based on data on homeowners aged 5 and under that he obtained from the National Data Agency.
The data showed 1,440 homeowners aged 5 or younger as of 2024. Of those, 56 owned two or more homes. Their combined housing assets were valued at about 236.05 billion won ($166 million).
Data from the National Tax Service showed that children aged 5 or younger earned 2.74 billion won in property income in 2024.
"Young people are worried about jeonse (a lump-sum deposit lease) fraud, while some own multiple homes before they even enter elementary school," Jeon said. "We need to correct a structure in which unearned gains from real estate widen the wealth gap, and strengthen policy efforts so that money concentrated in property flows into productive investment."