lease

Jan. 11 (Asia Today) — South Korean tenants who pay monthly maintenance fees in studio apartments and multi-family homes are increasingly disputing who must cover repair costs when in-unit equipment breaks, as housing lease mediation applications have surged in recent years.

Park Geon-ho, 28, said a washing machine in his one-room unit in Seoul’s Dongjak district broke less than two weeks after he moved in last January. When he asked the landlord to fix it, Park said he was told the cost could not be covered until an official service center confirmed the cause.

Needing laundry service immediately, Park said he hired a private repair company. He later split the 400,000 won ($310) repair bill with the landlord. Park said tenants often pay first even though they pay monthly maintenance fees and he said he was never told what those fees include.

A tenant in an officetel in Seoul’s Gwanak district said an air conditioner was heavily contaminated before he moved in last December. The tenant said a cleaning company warned it could be harmful and advised against using it but he said the unit was not replaced after he notified the landlord. He said he has since dealt with recurring throat and skin problems and installed a ventilation filter on his own.

Critics say the disputes are fueled by vague definitions of what maintenance fees cover in studio apartments and multi-family housing, where monthly charges may be fixed but management responsibilities are unclear.

According to the Housing and Commercial Building Lease Dispute Mediation Committee, housing lease dispute mediation applications rose from 44 cases in 2020 to 665 cases in 2023 and 709 cases in 2024.

The report said an institutional gap affects studios and multi-family homes because they are not covered by the Apartment Management Act. As a result, there are no standardized rules for fee items, calculation criteria, a requirement to provide statements or clear boundaries for what management includes. While maintenance fees are often explained as covering shared utilities such as electricity and water, responsibility for repairs to in-unit facilities such as washing machines or boilers is often left to a landlord’s discretion.

President Lee Jae-myung ordered a review last September of broader measures to address maintenance fee disputes in studios and multi-family homes, calling for improvements to collective building management and fact-finding, the report said.

Lawmakers are also reviewing revisions. A proposed amendment to the Housing Lease Protection Act submitted Dec. 9 would require landlords to specify total maintenance fees and calculation standards for each item in lease contracts, including for multi-unit housing outside mandatory management rules, according to the report.

Real estate industry officials said collecting maintenance fees implies a level of management responsibility and urged tenants to report defects immediately upon move-in to help clarify liability. They also called for maintenance scope to be spelled out at the contract stage to prevent repeat disputes.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has ended the lease agreement for three public golf courses in Washington, a move that offers President Trump an additional opportunity to put his stamp on another piece of the nation’s capital.

The National Links Trust, the nonprofit that has operated Washington’s three public courses on federal land for the last five years, said Wednesday that the Department of the Interior had terminated its 50-year lease agreement. The Interior Department said it was terminating the lease because the nonprofit had not implemented required capital improvements and failed to meet the terms of the lease.

While it was unclear what the Trump administration’s plans are for the golf courses, the move gives Trump, whose private company has developed numerous golf courses in the U.S. and abroad, the chance to remake links overlooking the Potomac River and in Rock Creek Park and a site that is part of Black golf history.

Officials for the National Links Trust said in a statement that they were “devastated” by the decision to terminate the lease and defended their management of the courses. They said $8.5 million had gone toward capital improvements at the courses and that rounds played and revenue had more than doubled in their tenure managing the courses. The nonprofit has agreed to keep managing the courses for the time being, but long-term renovations will stop.

“While this termination is a major setback, we remain stubbornly hopeful that a path forward can be found that preserves affordable and accessible public golf in the nation’s capital for generations to come,” the officials added.

The Department of the Interior’s decision comes as Trump rebrands civic spaces in Washington and deploys National Guard members to the streets for public safety. The Kennedy Center added Trump’s name this month after the center’s board of trustees — made up of Trump appointees — voted to change the name of the performing arts space designated by Congress as a memorial to John F. Kennedy. Trump is also in the midst of a construction project to build a ballroom on the White House’s East Wing, and he has put his name on the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Groves writes for the Associated Press.

Jan. 2 (UPI) — Danish renewable energy giant Orsted filed suit Thursday against the Department of Interior because it paused its lease on a $5 billion off-shore wind farm in Rhode Island.

Orsted’s Revolution Wind project is 87% complete, and “is expected to be ready to deliver reliable, affordable power to American homes in 2026,” a press release said.

Orsted shares jumped more than 4% on the lawsuit news, CNBC reported.

The administration put a halt to the project last month. The Interior Department announced it would pause the leases of five offshore wind farms being built on the East Coast.

Besides Revolution Wind, the projects are Vineyard Wind 1, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind. The projects are in New England, Virginia and New York. Revolution Wind is a joint venture between Orsted and Global Infrastructure Partners’ Skyborn Renewables. It’s about 15 miles off the coast of Rhode Island.

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum announced on X in December: “Due to national security concerns identified by @DeptofWar, @Interior is PAUSING leases for 5 expensive, unreliable, heavily subsidized offshore wind farms! ONE natural gas pipeline supplies as much energy as these 5 projects COMBINED.”

The department explained in a press release that “unclassified reports from the U.S. government have long found that the movement of massive turbine blades and the highly reflective towers create radar interference called ‘clutter.’ The clutter caused by offshore wind projects obscures legitimate moving targets and generates false targets in the vicinity of the wind projects,” it said.

But Orsted argues that, “Revolution Wind has spent and committed billions of dollars in reliance upon, and has met the requests of, a thorough review process. Additional federal reviews and approvals included the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, National Marine Fisheries Service, and many other agencies.”

Revolution Wind faces “substantial harm” from the lease suspension order, Orsted said. “As a result, litigation is a necessary step to protect the rights of the project.”

Orsted’s other project, Sunrise Wind, which also had its lease suspended, “continues to evaluate all options to resolve the matter, including engagement with relevant agencies and stakeholders and considering legal proceedings,” Orsted said. Sunrise Wind is about 30 miles off the coast of New York.

President Donald Trump has made it clear that he dislikes wind energy, calling the turbines “ugly” and saying the noise they make causes cancer.

On Aug. 22, the administration ordered Orsted to stop construction on Revolution Wind to “address concerns related to the protection of national security interest of the United States.”

On Aug. 29, the Department of Transportation announced it was cutting about $679 million in funding to 12 wind farms, calling the projects “wasteful.”

Orsted then filed suit in September to reverse the stop-work order. In that filing, it said the project had already spent $5 billion.