📌 3-Line Summary > - Police theft reports and motorcycle usage cessation reports are separate. If you don’t file a usage cessation report with the relevant authority, the vehicle will still be registered in your name, and fines for lacking mandatory insurance will keep accruing. > - If you received a pre-penalty notice, provide evidence of theft within the submission deadline. The document confirming the date of the theft report is the key piece of evidence. > - A scrap yard will not accept a car with a seizure registered on it. You must follow the order: settling arrears → confirming the seizure release → scrapping → deregistration → insurance cancellation to avoid delays.
Table of Contents 1. The Number in the Pre-Penalty Notice 2. Thinking It Was Over After Reporting to the Police 3. One Motorcycle, Two Government Offices 4. What Was Attached to the Submission Form 5. Why Small Car Scrapping Was Blocked 6. Why We Settled Arrears Instead of Using Over-Age Deregistration 7. Documents Completed Ten Days Before Departure 8. What to Do When You Need to Dispose of a Motorcycle or Car
I am an administrative agent (administrative scrivener) with an office located in Songdo, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon. I’d like to introduce an episode I encountered while working.
The number in the “Violation Period” section of the pre-penalty notice was over 400 days. This meant that the person had been in possession of a motorcycle without mandatory insurance for over a year. The problem was that the person who received the notice hadn’t seen that motorcycle in over a year.
1. The Number in the Pre-Penalty Notice
The client was a man in his late twenties. He had been doing delivery work for nearly three years, and his overseas employment was confirmed next month, with departure just five weeks away. The first contact was via email. There was a photo of the pre-penalty notice, a photo of the receipt from the police station, and a short question attached.
“I reported the motorcycle stolen last year and filed a police report. Why am I receiving an insurance penalty?”
From the photos, I could roughly guess what had happened. The theft report had been filed. However, there hadn’t been a single change in the registration records with the relevant authority.
He had one more thing to take care of: a 12-year-old small car he used for commuting and moving furniture. When he called a scrap yard to scrap it before departure, he received the reply, "We can’t accept it now because there’s a lien on it.”
One motorcycle, one small car. Five weeks until departure.
If either of them were left as they were, overdue fines and tax notices would continue to accumulate at his empty house in Korea. Processing them while overseas would require new proxy documents, which would cost more time and money. Therefore, the goal was set as one: to complete the paperwork for both vehicles before departure.
2. Thinking It Was Over After Reporting to the Police
Here’s what happened. About a year and two months ago, a 125cc scooter parked in the underground parking lot of an apartment complex disappeared in the early morning. He immediately reported it to 112 that day and received a receipt from the police station a few days later. He also searched used trading sites for similar models for a while.
Around that time, the motorcycle insurance maturity date arrived. He no longer had the motorcycle, so there was no reason to renew the insurance. The insurance company sent a renewal notification, but he simply ignored it. This is something anyone might have done.
However, it is read differently in the world of documents.
Under the Motor Vehicle Management Act, two-wheeled vehicles must have usage registration and a license plate to operate. If you stop using it, you must also report the cessation of usage to the relevant authority to finalize the record. The police theft report is a procedure for investigation, and it is not automatically transferred to the authority that manages the registration record. From the authority’s perspective, the motorcycle was still “in use” in his name. Since the two-wheeled vehicle was not insured, the penalty procedure was triggered.
Theft reports are the police’s job, and usage cessation is the authority’s job. There is no connecting line between the two.
There is a common misunderstanding at this point. The thought that “if the police find it, then you can finalize things then.” However, if it is not found, the period of possession will continue to increase in record. In the automotive sector, a provision has been created that if mandatory insurance enrollment is not fulfilled for a year, the provincial governor can deregister the vehicle ex officio, but this is only a means of finalizing records, and does not resolve the accumulated penalties in the meantime.
3. One Motorcycle, Two Government Offices
I looked back at the pre-notification letter. The issuing agency was not the office where he had registered the motorcycle. His address had changed during his move, and the fine was issued by the jurisdiction of his current address. However, the registration record for the motorcycle’s use was following the record of the original registration office.
To summarize it this way:
- Pre-notification — the government office with jurisdiction over the current address (responsible for the unpaid insurance fine)
- Motorcycle Use Cessation Report — the office responsible for motorcycle registration matters (depending on the region, the district office or administrative welfare center)
- Proof of Theft — the police station that received the report
These three offices do not share records with each other. So, even if you call one and say “it was stolen,” the procedures of the other two will not stop.
That afternoon, I arranged the order as follows:
1. Obtain the official document confirming the theft report from the police station. He had a temporary receipt photo from the day of the report. To submit to the government office, an official confirmation document with the report date and vehicle information is required. 2. First, file the Motorcycle Use Cessation Report with that document. The license plate disappeared with the motorcycle, so it cannot be returned. This reason is stated in the report as the reason for cessation due to theft. 3. Submit a statement of opinion combining the Use Cessation processing result and the Theft Confirmation Document.
The order was important for a reason. It’s different to simply state “it was stolen” in the statement of opinion, and to attach the result of “the theft report was filed and then the Use Cessation was processed by the government office.” This is because one more public record becomes available for the officer to consider when making a judgment.
4. What Was Attached to the Statement of Opinion
The pre-notification letter stated the deadline for submitting a statement of opinion. Calculating from the date of receipt, there were roughly ten days remaining. It wasn’t a comfortable schedule to obtain the police station documents, file the Use Cessation Report, and submit the statement of opinion.
The police station documents came out in just two days. The Use Cessation Report was filed the next day. The officer confirmed the reason for non-return of the license plate and accepted the document. I wrote the statement of opinion as soon as the processing result was confirmed.
The logic of the statement of opinion was kept simple.
Article 7 of the Act on the Regulation of Violations of Public Order stipulates that fines should not be imposed for violations of order that occur without intent or negligence. In other words, the principle is that fines should not be imposed for violations that occurred due to circumstances beyond one’s control.
I organized this principle into three points based on his circumstances.
- It was an object that was not possessed. The theft report date precedes the insurance expiration date. At the time of expiration, he did not already possess the motorcycle.
- It was reported immediately after the theft. It was not abandoned or hidden, but there is a record of reporting to the police on the day it disappeared.
- The facts were settled immediately. After receiving the pre-notification, the Use Cessation Report was completed promptly.
The attachments were three: the police station’s theft report confirmation document, the Use Cessation Report processing result, and the insurance company’s contract expiration confirmation. The expiration date document is necessary to establish the time sequence of “theft first, then expiration” in writing.
I had already told him one thing. He is responsible for the fact that the Use Cessation Report was filed late. The fact that he did not handle the government procedures for over a year after the theft cannot be erased. How the relevant agency views that aspect is the agency’s judgment. I could not guarantee the outcome.
5. Why the Subcompact Car Disposal Was Blocked
While the motorcycle documents were being processed, I looked at the subcompact car.
Checking the vehicle registration record, I found two liens. One was for a parking violation fine from a few years ago, and the other was for overdue automobile taxes. The total amount of the two was not large. He remembered receiving the overdue notice, but he forgot about it when he moved, and the automobile tax notice seems to have gone to his old address.
If a lien is registered, it is generally the case that a scrap yard will not accept the vehicle. This is because the de-registration cannot be processed. To dispose of the vehicle, the lien must first be released, and to release the lien, the overdue amount must first be settled.
On the surface, the order seems simple. However, the schedule was the problem.
- Even if the overdue amount is paid, the lien is released by each agency, and it takes different amounts of time for the release to be reflected in the certificate.
- The scrap yard will not accept the vehicle until the lien is removed from the certificate.
- The scrap yard must complete the disposal process and then de-register the vehicle.
There were only about four weeks left until his departure.
6. Why We Settled Arrears Instead of Using Over-Age Deregistration
There was one more option. For older vehicles with little economic value, there's a way to scrap them even if a lien remains. This is commonly called over-age deregistration. For inherited vehicles with large liens or where the debtor is unreachable, this can be the only way out.
However, this wasn't suitable for this case. There were two reasons.
Firstly, time. Over-age deregistration involves notifying relevant agencies and waiting for a certain period. In practice, you often receive guidance that it takes about a month and a half to complete. It would be difficult to finish it before departure.
Secondly, the outstanding debt doesn't disappear. Even with over-age deregistration, the overdue fines and vehicle taxes remain in his name. If there are outstanding debts while he's abroad, that will create another issue to resolve.
Since the outstanding amount wasn't large, it was faster and cleaner to pay it now and release the lien. He readily agreed.
So, this time, we planned the order of actions by agency.
1. Monday — We paid all overdue fines and vehicle taxes and requested lien releases from each department. 2. Thursday — We obtained a new certificate of registration and confirmed that one item had been released. The other one was still pending. We checked with the responsible department and they said the release request was in progress. 3. The following Tuesday — All liens were removed from the certificate of registration. We scheduled an appointment with the scrap yard.
While waiting, we took care of one more thing. We didn't immediately cancel the car insurance when handing the car over to the scrap yard. If we canceled the insurance before the deregistration was complete, a few days could become an uninsured period again. We didn't want to repeat the experience we had with the motorcycle.
7. Documents Completed Ten Days Before Departure
The scrap yard handled the deregistration after taking possession of the vehicle. On the day the deregistration was processed, we received a certificate of deregistration and sent it to the insurance company to cancel the contract. If there were any prepaid vehicle taxes, there would be an amount to be refunded based on the deregistration date, but there were none for this vehicle, as it was in arrears. Instead, there would be nothing more to accumulate.
The outcome for the motorcycle came a little later. The relevant agency determined that no fine would be imposed for the period after the date of the theft report. Since the insurance hadn't been canceled before the theft, the fine in the advance notice was effectively not imposed. However, this was only because his timeline aligned neatly with the documents. If the insurance expiration date had come before the theft, that gap would have been fined.
All documents were finalized ten days before departure.
In the final phone call, he said he was still wearing a motorcycle auxiliary key on his keychain. He hadn't removed it because he wanted to keep it in case he ever needed it. When I said he could remove it now that it had been decommissioned, he paused and replied,
"I'll just keep it as a souvenir. A motorcycle key with no license plate – it's the most useless souvenir in the world."
In administrative procedures, the moment you confirm that they are complete is often more important than the moment they are actually completed. He boarded the plane without worrying about overdue notices in Korea.
8. What to Do If You Need to Dispose of a Motorcycle or Car
If you are in a similar situation, please check the following steps.
① If your vehicle is stolen, complete the government procedure separately after the police report. For motorcycles, this is a decommissioning report; for cars, it’s deregistration. Filing a police report alone will not change the registration record.
② Keep a formal confirmation document with the date of the theft report. A simple receipt photo may not be sufficient as submission material for government agencies.
③ If you have received a advance notice of a fine, check the submission deadline. If you submit the date of the theft, the insurance expiration date, and the decommissioning processing result within the deadline, the timeline will be proven by the documents.
④ Before scrapping, obtain a certificate of vehicle registration. If there are any liens or mortgages, the scrap yard will not accept the vehicle. The order is: settle outstanding debts → confirm lien release → scrap → deregistration.
⑤ Cancel the insurance after deregistration. You must cancel it after receiving the certificate of deregistration to avoid an uninsured gap.
⑥ If you have a departure or relocation schedule, start working backward from that date. Lien releases can take several days per agency, and procedures like over-age deregistration have a public notice period that can take more than a month.
The reporting agency and required documents may vary depending on the vehicle type (motorcycle/passenger car/truck) and location. Whether overdue fines are imposed is determined by the responsible agency based on individual circumstances. For accurate articles and interpretations, please refer to the National Law Information Center or the relevant agency.
This article is based on reconstructed actual consultation cases, and the characters, names, and locations mentioned are not related to any specific individuals or events.
