Check Korean building manager filings and external audits together
A manager of a Korean commercial building or officetel may have filing, audit, bookkeeping and reporting duties after appointment.
The number of individually owned units, the number of owners and the financial figures serve different purposes.
This calculator separates those tests and provides deadlines and administrative fine scenarios under Korean rules verified for 2026.
This is a Korea-specific calculator under the Act on the Ownership and Management of Aggregate Buildings, rather than a statement of condominium law in another country.
It helps a manager, owners or a management committee prepare records and questions for the competent authority or adviser.
It does not submit a filing, appoint an auditor or determine a final administrative penalty.
Prepare the decision before commissioning work
Use the results to establish whether an annual audit or a qualifying owner-requested audit is required, whether a valid annual exemption exists, and which evidence and dates remain unconfirmed.
An audit fee quotation is a budgeting input supplied by you, not a statutory market price or permission to replace compliance with payment of a fine.
10 owners for appointment, 50 units for notification
Appointment: at least 10 owners
Act Article 24(1) requires appointment of a manager when there are 10 or more unit owners.
One owner holding several units should not be counted as several people merely because the unit count is larger.
Resolve overlapping joint ownership and the legally applicable owner count before entering the totals.
Filing: at least 50 units
For a building within scope, Article 24(6) and Decree Article 5-5 require the appointed manager to notify the competent local authority within 30 days of appointment.
This test uses individually owned units, not the owner headcount.
If no appointment date is known, the filing clock remains undetermined; that is not confirmation of a zero fine.
Supporting evidence depends on the appointment route: owners’ meeting minutes, bylaws and management committee minutes, or the court decision appointing a temporary manager.
A committee appointment requires the relevant bylaw basis.
The manager’s term is separately determined by the bylaws within a two-year limit, so retain the appointment and reappointment documents as well as the filing receipt.
Identify buildings excluded from these particular duties
Legal classification matters more than a marketing name
- Mandatory-management apartment housing under the Multi-Family Housing Management Act
- Rental housing
- Large or quasi-large stores with a notified large-store manager under the Distribution Industry Development Act
These exclusions affect the appointment notification, Article 26(1)–(3) reporting, books and inspection provisions, and the Article 26-2 audit provisions.
They do not cancel duties imposed by another housing or retail management regime.
An ordinary shopping building does not qualify simply because its occupants call it a large store.
Do not extend those exclusions into a general exemption from the 10-owner appointment rule.
Confirm the actual building category and any notified retail manager using the relevant management records and the local authority.
The calculator does not look up the building register or verify that a retail manager has been legally notified.
Annual external audit: at least 150 units and one KRW 300 million test
Act Article 26-2(1) and Decree Article 6-2(1) require an external audit at least once every year for an in-scope building with 150 or more individually owned units that meets either financial condition below.
The auditor must satisfy the statutory definition under the Act on External Audit of Stock Companies, Etc.; an internal management committee reviewer is a different role.
Either figure must independently reach KRW 300,000,000
- Management fees collected in the preceding accounting year are at least KRW 300,000,000
- The repair reserve balance at the end of that accounting year is at least KRW 300,000,000
This is an OR test: do not add the two figures together.
KRW 200,000,000 of fees and KRW 100,000,000 of reserves do not meet the threshold through their combined total.
Collected fees include electricity, water and other usage charges paid by owners or occupants, so a figure limited to the management company’s fee may understate the statutory amount.
Exactly KRW 300,000,000 qualifies; KRW 299,999,999 does not qualify through that figure alone.
The difference between 149 and 150 units also changes the legal route.
Absence of this statutory annual audit duty does not prevent an audit under applicable bylaws or a separate owners’ decision.
Annual exemption requires at least 2/3 of both owners and voting rights
An otherwise qualifying annual audit may be waived for a year when an owners’ meeting resolves not to obtain that year’s audit with at least 2/3 of all unit owners and at least 2/3 of all voting rights.
Both thresholds are inclusive: exactly 2/3 passes the numeric test.
A large voting share cannot compensate for an insufficient number of owners.
Use exact comparisons
Let N be total owners, Y supporting owners, T total voting weight and A supporting weight.
The comparisons are Y × 3 ≥ N × 2 AND A × 3 ≥ T × 2; the minimum supporting headcount is ceil(2 × N / 3).
Use the same voting-weight unit for numerator and denominator instead of treating a rounded 66.67% as the exact legal threshold.
A numeric pass does not establish that a valid resolution exists.
Confirm the actual owners’ meeting, the accounting year covered and the minutes before marking the exemption as verified.
Last year’s resolution is not automatically an exemption for this year.
Where an occupant exercises the owner’s voting right, check the Article 26-2(2) conditions and avoid counting the occupant and owner twice.
Owner-requested audit: 50–149 units and a qualifying 1/5 petition
For an in-scope building with at least 50 but fewer than 150 units, Article 26-2(3) requires an audit after a qualifying joint request by at least 1/5 of the owners if the financial conditions are met.
A building that could become subject to a request is different from one that has actually received a valid request.
An occupant using a unit with the owner’s consent may sign in place of that owner under the statutory conditions.
KRW 300 million route
Either the preceding year’s collected fees or the year-end repair reserve must be at least KRW 300,000,000.
This route does not require an additional three-year audit gap.
Three years without audit and KRW 100 million
The building has not received an audit by a statutory auditor for at least 3 years, including the preceding accounting year, and either financial figure is at least KRW 100,000,000.
Both the audit-gap condition and the financial condition are needed for this alternative route.
The minimum petition count is ceil(N / 5).
With 11 owners, two signatures are insufficient and three qualifying signatures reach the headcount threshold.
The annual exemption resolution does not waive this petition-based route, and a building with 150 or more units cannot be reassigned to it.
You must verify signatures, representation or occupant status and actual receipt of the request.
Distinguish 30 days, 3 months, 9 months and 1 month
Korean building management filing and audit deadlines, triggering events and legal scope| Step | Trigger and scope | Period |
|---|
| Manager appointment notification | Actual appointment, where notification is required | 30 days |
| Appoint external auditor | Accounting year-end, annual audit route | 3 months |
| Complete external audit | Accounting year-end, annual and petition routes | 9 months |
| Report audit results | Actual receipt of the audit report or results | 1 month |
The three-month auditor appointment rule in Decree Article 6-3(1) applies to the annual audit route.
It is not imposed indiscriminately on 50–149-unit petition cases.
The nine-month completion rule in Article 6-3(3) covers both routes, so a request received late in the timetable calls for prompt confirmation with the competent authority.
Calendar months are not converted to fixed 30-day or 90-day blocks.
Civil Act Articles 157, 159 and 160 govern the excluded first day, the final calendar date and the last-day rule when the corresponding day does not exist.
For an accounting year ending April 30, the three-month arithmetic end is July 31.
For December 31, the three-month and nine-month arithmetic ends are March 31 and September 30 of the following year.
Read the holiday coverage indicator
Civil Act Article 161 rolls a period ending on a Saturday or public holiday to the next eligible day.
The calculator shows the arithmetic end and the adjusted date, using an embedded 2026–2027 public-holiday calendar.
Dates outside that window remain reference schedules requiring a holiday check; newly designated temporary holidays and local receipt arrangements also need confirmation.
A days-left value of zero means the reference date is the due date, and a negative value means the date has passed; elapsed time alone does not prove a violation.
Books and management reporting remain separate duties
Act Article 26(1) requires a management affairs report at least once a year to owners and occupants using their units with consent.
Decree Article 6 covers costs, collection, expenditure, reserves, other income and uses, contracts, rules, significant business and budgets or accounts.
Unless the bylaws provide otherwise, the assessed contributions and cost calculation method must be reported in writing once a month.
Monthly books and five-year retention for 50 or more units
In-scope buildings with at least 50 units must prepare monthly books for management transactions and retain them with supporting evidence for 5 years from the end of the relevant accounting year.
Being outside the external-audit threshold, or holding an annual audit exemption, does not itself remove these duties.
Requests by interested persons to inspect records or obtain copies must be considered subject to the statutory exceptions for protected information.
Audit results are generally reported in writing within one month after actual receipt to owners and qualifying occupants.
Decree Article 6-4(3) allows bylaws to provide for fulfilment by display in the building or publication on its website.
Do not assume that merely posting a notice satisfies the duty without checking the actual bylaw provision.
Administrative fine bases and statutory caps
The following figures reproduce the individual standards in the Annex connected to Decree Article 23, expressed in KRW.
Repeated-offence levels relate to a penalty disposition for the same offence within the preceding year and the subsequent detection date.
Unrelated prior offences are not combined into one universal level.
Korean aggregate building administrative fine bases by offence level and statutory caps, all amounts in KRW| Offence | First | Second | Third or later | Statutory cap |
|---|
| Notification delayed less than one month | 200,000 | 200,000 | 200,000 | 2,000,000 |
| Notification delayed at least one month | 400,000 | 400,000 | 400,000 | 2,000,000 |
| Missing or false management report | 150,000 | 300,000 | 500,000 | 2,000,000 |
| Bookkeeping or supporting evidence breach | 800,000 | 1,200,000 | 2,000,000 | 2,000,000 |
| Failure to allow report or book inspection | 800,000 | 1,200,000 | 2,000,000 | 2,000,000 |
| Omitted or fraudulent audit | 2,000,000 | 3,000,000 | 5,000,000 | 5,000,000 |
| Missing or false audit-results report | 2,000,000 | 2,000,000 | 2,000,000 | 3,000,000 |
| Audit obstruction | 2,000,000 | 3,000,000 | 5,000,000 | 5,000,000 |
| Disobeying supervisory report or document order | 500,000 | 1,000,000 | 2,000,000 | 3,000,000 |
| Failure to retain bylaws, minutes or written records | 800,000 | 1,200,000 | 2,000,000 | 2,000,000 |
| Refusal to allow inspection of bylaws or minutes | 800,000 | 1,200,000 | 2,000,000 | 2,000,000 |
| Missing or false minutes | 800,000 | 1,200,000 | 2,000,000 | 2,000,000 |
Discretionary adjustments and overlapping conduct
The authority may reduce or increase the individual base by up to 1/2 in the circumstances set out in the Annex.
A reduction is not automatic, cannot exceed 1/2 even with multiple grounds, and is unavailable to an offender in arrears on administrative fines.
The upper scenario is min(base × 1.5, statutory cap).
For example, the third-or-later omitted-audit base is KRW 5,000,000 and remains capped at KRW 5,000,000 even when aggravation is considered.
If one act falls under several offences, the heaviest applicable fine governs that act; separate concurrent acts may attract separate fines.
The calculator therefore does not present a simple sum of every selected row as a final payable amount.
Each selected row is a scenario whose actual facts, legal requirements and offence level must be verified.
Worked examples: exact thresholds and calendar dates
150 units, three owners and KRW 300 million
Assume an ordinary in-scope building has 150 units, three owners, collected fees of KRW 300,000,000 and no repair reserve.
The annual audit test is met.
Two supporting owners and voting weight of 2 out of a total 3 are exactly 2/3 on both measures, but an exemption still requires a verified valid meeting resolution for the relevant year.
Supporting weight of 1.9999 out of 3 fails the voting test even when two owners support it.
100 units, 11 owners and three years without an audit
Assume 100 units, 11 owners, KRW 100,000,000 of collected fees and at least three unaudited years including the preceding accounting year.
The alternative petition-route conditions are met, but two petitioning owners are insufficient.
Three qualifying owners making a valid received request reach the required count.
With only two unaudited years and no separate KRW 300 million condition, this example does not meet the financial and audit-gap route.
Year-end deadlines and actual report receipt
For an annual audit of an accounting year ending 2025-12-31, the arithmetic auditor appointment and audit completion deadlines are 2026-03-31 and 2026-09-30.
In a separate receipt example, results received on 2026-01-30 have a one-month arithmetic end of 2026-02-28 and a weekend/public-holiday adjusted date of 2026-03-03.
These are separate examples explaining each calculation, not a single combined audit chronology.
How to use the results and prepare the next action
- Confirm the legal building category, individually owned unit count and total owner count.
Keep the unit and person denominators separate.
- Check the preceding accounting year’s collection ledger and year-end repair reserve.
Include usage charges and confirm the consecutive unaudited accounting years.
- Enter the actual petition receipt or annual exemption evidence.
Use the full owner and voting-right denominators.
- Enter the reference date, accounting year-end and actual appointment, filing and audit-report receipt dates where known.
Leave an unknown event unconfirmed instead of replacing it with a planned completion date.
- Read the duty and deadline results before selecting actual violation scenarios.
Verify each offence level, any fine arrears and your separate audit fee quotation.
- Where an audit is needed, follow the resolution procedure of an established management committee and consider requesting an auditor recommendation from the competent authority or the Korean Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
For notification, submit the appointment evidence to the authority and retain the receipt.
An audit fee quotation can be placed beside the omitted-audit fine scenario for budgeting, but paying a fine does not discharge the audit obligation.
The tool does not supply a market fee, an expected probability of enforcement or a recommendation to delay compliance.
If time has passed or the validity of a petition or resolution is disputed, take the original records to the competent authority and an appropriate adviser.
Frequently asked questions
Does one person owning 50 units meet the same appointment and filing test?
No.
Appointment uses the threshold of at least 10 owners, while notification uses at least 50 units in an in-scope building.
Actual appointment and the building classification must also be checked.
Can fees and the repair reserve be added to reach KRW 300 million?
No.
One of the two figures must independently meet its financial threshold.
The unit count then determines whether the annual or petition-based audit route is relevant.
Does exactly 2/3 support fail the exemption test?
No.
Both tests are at least 2/3, so exact equality passes the numeric comparison.
A valid owners’ meeting resolution for the relevant year must still be verified; a rounded percentage alone is insufficient.
Must every 50–149-unit building obtain an audit after a petition?
The financial conditions must also be met.
Check the KRW 300 million route or the three-year unaudited period with KRW 100 million route, and a valid received petition by at least 1/5 of owners.
Does the three-month auditor appointment rule also govern petition audits?
Decree Article 6-3(1) applies that appointment deadline to annual audits.
It is not imposed automatically on petition audits, while the nine-month completion rule in Article 6-3(3) applies to both routes.
Does an annual audit exemption remove the bookkeeping duty?
No.
The audit exemption is separate from bookkeeping and management reporting.
An in-scope building must retain its monthly books and evidence for five years from the end of the relevant accounting year.
Is the displayed fine an official bill that must be paid now?
No.
The authority determines the facts, repeat-offence level, adjustment grounds and statutory cap.
Several labels applying to the same act are not simply added together.
Can I rely on the adjusted deadline for any year?
The embedded holiday calendar covers 2026–2027.
Check dates outside that period, newly designated temporary holidays and actual receipt arrangements, and read the arithmetic date and reference warnings together.
Official sources and update basis
Verified on 2026-11-01 under Korean law.
The governing aggregate-building Act and Decree took effect on 2023-09-29; the National Law Information OPEN API confirmed current Act ID 001262 / MST 249285 and Decree ID 009582 / MST 254889, including the Annex.
The period rules are from the Civil Act effective 2026-03-17, with holiday calendar coverage stated separately.
Recheck exclusions, financial thresholds, appointment and audit periods, reporting rules and the fine Annex when legislation changes.
Actual bylaws, the owner and voting-right roster, petition evidence and report receipt must also be confirmed for the particular building.
Do not apply this current result unchanged to an event governed by a different historical rule set.
Prepare this year’s filing and audit checklist
Start with the building category and the two denominators, then obtain the collection ledger and year-end reserve balance.
Use the duty and deadline results to prepare committee resolutions, auditor recommendations, appointment evidence and reporting recipients.
For a separate voting tally, use the related owners’ meeting quorum calculator and review the correct agenda and procedure.
Open the related owners’ voting quorum calculator