What do Koreans call the commission you pay a real-estate agent when finding a home?

The brokerage fee, casually called bok-bi, is the commission paid to a licensed real-estate agent for arranging a rental or sale, calculated as a percentage of the deposit and rent that scales with the transaction size and is capped by law depending on the amount and housing type. Confirming the rate up front matters because agents sometimes quote informal figures that exceed the legal ceiling, and a reputable agent earns that fee partly by verifying ownership and walking you through the contract's terms.

A 'lottery fee' and an 'entrance fee' are not real categories in Korean housing transactions; they are invented terms meant to sound plausible but have no basis in how brokerage commissions actually work.

Because the fee scales with transaction size, it can become a meaningful cost on a large jeonse deposit, which is why tenants sometimes negotiate the rate within the legal cap rather than assuming the agent's first quote is final.