Debt Collection Calls Are Capped at Seven in Seven Days — Korea’s Right to Request Debt Restructuring

What the law really changed was the order of things

Previously, once arrears began the lender ran collections and the borrower endured it until moving on to the Credit Counselling and Recovery Service or personal rehabilitation — in practice the only route. This law inserts a step in front of that: direct negotiation between the lender and the borrower. A financial company cannot ignore a restructuring request, and must say yes or no within a fixed deadline.

Which means knowing about it changes the outcome, because nothing happens unless you ask. How to rebuild a credit score that has already fallen is covered separately in why your credit score matters — habits and common misconceptions.

The right to request restructuring — under 30 million won, an answer in 10 business days

Where a personal financial claim is in arrears, the borrower can ask the lender directly for a restructuring. Under the Financial Services Commission's guidance, claims with a principal below 30 million won are covered, and the request can be made in writing, by phone or in person. Deferring the due date, splitting repayments and adjusting interest are all on the table.

The deadline is what matters. The financial company must notify you of its decision on the restructuring within 10 business days of receiving the request. Time spent correcting or supplementing documents is excluded. File a complete set of paperwork and an answer is due inside two weeks.

There are defined grounds for refusal

A right to request is not the same as a restructuring granted. Situations that overlap with another procedure — litigation under way, a Credit Counselling and Recovery Service restructuring already in progress, personal rehabilitation or bankruptcy proceedings — count as grounds for refusal. So does failing to supplement documents repeatedly, or resubmitting the same request when nothing about your repayment capacity has changed.

One more: if a restructuring agreement has been cancelled, you cannot request again until three months have passed. Agreeing to terms you cannot keep closes the door for a while, so the first agreement should be set at an amount you can actually carry.

Collection contact is capped at seven times in seven days

The same law caps the number of contacts. A debt collector may not contact you more than seven times in seven days per claim. Calls, texts, emails and visits all count toward it.

Exceptions are defined too. Notices required by statute do not count as collection contact, and contact that does not reach the debtor is excluded from the tally — although for visits, only two in seven days are excluded on that basis. Where a call is answered but cut off before the necessary conversation is finished, up to two calls on the same day are also excepted. People raise the obvious objection here — that a collector could simply keep calling an unanswered phone — and the practical answer is that visits carry almost no such exception.

You can specify times and channels

Separate from the count is the contact restriction request. A debtor can ask that no collection contact be made during specified hours, within a range set at up to 28 hours a week. For anyone in a job where calls cannot be answered on shift, that single request changes the situation considerably.

Channels can be partly restricted too. What you cannot do is block calls and visits at the same time, because the design does not allow every route to the debtor to be closed off. The number of channels that may be specified is described differently across guidance documents, so it is more accurate to check the form and instructions of the financial company you are filing with.

Disaster, surgery or a death can pause collection

A collection deferral mechanism came in as well. Where defined grounds exist — a special disaster area declaration, surgery or hospitalisation of the debtor or a family member, a death, a marriage — collection can be suspended for an agreed period. The term is up to three months, extendable once.

It does not apply unless you ask. Medical bills landing at the same time as collection usually make things worse, so where you have documentary grounds, the better order is to request a deferral first and prepare the restructuring during it. The routes for reducing unexpected medical costs themselves are set out in health insurance refunds and the out-of-pocket ceiling.

The range that late-payment interest applies to also shrank

When the benefit of the term was lost, lenders used to treat even the portion not yet due as in default and charge penalty interest on all of it. This law blocks that for personal financial claims with a principal below 50 million won. Penalty interest applies only to the portion already past due; the portion not yet due carries the contracted rate.

Auction of a home to live in was slowed as well. For an owner-occupied home worth 600 million won or less, an auction can only be filed six months after the grounds arise. Decisive steps against a debtor — loss of the benefit of the term, filing for auction of a home, assignment of the claim — must be notified 10 business days in advance, by content-certified or registered mail or another verifiable method. How loan interest rates are assembled in the first place is covered in the structure of loan interest rates — fixed and variable, spreads, DSR.

If arrears have started, move in this order

1. Identify who holds the claim. Whether it is still the original creditor or has been sold on decides who you file with.
2. File the contact restriction request first. Sorting out hours and channels buys the room to prepare everything else.
3. Request a deferral if you have grounds. Disaster, surgery, hospitalisation and death need documentation, not argument.
4. File the restructuring request. Submit the request form, material showing your repayment capacity, and a consent form for collecting and using your information. A proposed plan of your own can go in with it.
5. Wait the 10 business days. If no answer comes or the procedure is not followed, the Financial Supervisory Service complaint channel is the next step.
6. If refused, move to the Credit Counselling and Recovery Service or the courts. This right sits in front of those procedures; it does not replace them.

There are also ways to adjust loan terms before arrears begin. If prepayment fees are the obstacle, start with why prepayment penalties were halved — the shift to an actual-cost basis.

This article was compiled in August 2026 from the Act on the Management of Personal Financial Claims and the Protection of Personal Financial Debtors (in force 17 October 2024), the Financial Services Commission's published policy Q&A, and the debt restructuring request guidance on the Korea Ministry of Government Legislation's Easy Law portal (Article 35 on requests, Article 37 on processing). Thresholds, grounds for refusal and the detailed scope of contact restriction requests may be applied differently under the enforcement decree, supervisory regulations and each company's internal rules, so confirm with the financial company and the Financial Supervisory Service before filing. This is an outline of the system and does not substitute for legal advice on an individual debt.