Ulsan City Implements Measures to Manage Unpaid Traffic Fines by Foreign Vehicle Owners

Strong Measures Including Wage and Exclusive Insurance Seizure to Begin Next Month

Ulsan City will establish management measures for overdue fines on foreign-owned vehicles and implement them starting July 1 to increase the collection rate from foreigners.

According to Ulsan City, as of May this year, the amount of overdue fines on foreign-owned vehicles in the Ulsan area is 804 million KRW. This accounts for about 2.5% of the total overdue amount of 33.039 billion KRW.

However, collection has been difficult due to reasons such as unclear residence addresses and cases where individuals return to their home countries while in arrears.

Ulsan City will form a foreign vehicle overdue fine management team consisting of three officials in charge of collections. The team will systematically manage overdue cases and launch strong collection activities, such as seizing salaries and exclusive insurance payments of foreigners with large overdue amounts.

In addition, to improve foreigners' awareness of fine payments, the city will produce and distribute multilingual information leaflets (in Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesian, English, Uzbek, and Cambodian) to district offices and vehicle registration offices. Ulsan also plans to actively promote this through events such as the Ulsan Foreigners' Chuseok Festival (September) and the Dong-gu World Culture Festival (October).

In particular, to eradicate illegal proxy-registered vehicles (so-called "Daepocha") owned by foreigners, the city plans to issue operation suspension orders for vehicles registered under the names of those who have left the country permanently.

Additionally, Ulsan City will propose to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety to require a certificate of payment for local administrative penalties and surcharges as a mandatory document for foreigners when re-entering Korea, aiming to establish a strong collection system.