To guard against losing a jeonse deposit, you can buy a product where an institution guarantees the deposit's return. What is it?

Jeonse deposit-return guarantee insurance, offered through institutions like HUG, is a product where the guarantor institution promises to repay the tenant's deposit if the landlord is unable or unwilling to return it at lease-end, then separately pursues recovery from the landlord itself. This shifts the financial risk of landlord default away from the tenant and onto the guarantee institution, for the cost of a premium.

Travel insurance and phone-damage insurance cover entirely different risks — trip cancellations or device breakage — and have no connection to protecting a housing deposit.

This insurance became especially prominent after high-profile cases where landlords running large jeonse portfolios couldn't repay tenants amid falling property prices, prompting many renters to treat deposit-return insurance as close to mandatory rather than optional.