Expanding Land for Development in Agricultural Development Area

Starting next year, the government will re-designate the agricultural development land (11,484 km²), which currently accounts for 11.5 percent of the total Korean territory (99,461 km²). Therefore, by the end of 2006, there will be acres of land available for development.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) announced on November 26 that there will be research conducted on the actual condition of the agricultural development land starting next year, following the results of the “First Agriculture System Reform Project” conducted by the Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements which advises changing a portion of the agricultural development land into development control land that has a larger potential for development.

An MAF spokesperson explained that since the opening of the agricultural market is fast-approaching, the government has decided on such matters by taking into consideration the findings that the areas nearby mountains or lands with sharp inclines are inefficient for farming.

To promote the project, the ministry will dispatch related officials to agricultural development areas by the middle of next year in order to select inefficient farming sites and to lift regulations against them by the end of 2006. The specific range will be decided upon according to the result of the research on the actual condition.

The system of agricultural development land was implemented in 1992 to preserve large-scale agricultural land needed for a stable supply of food products.

Currently, the total of 11,484 km² (about 3.4 billion pyong) of which 10,630 km² (about 3.189 billion pyong) is farming land and 854 km² (about 256.2 million pyong) is non-farming land, is designated exclusively for cultivation and for agricultural facilities (crop storage or wholesale market). MAF will revise the agriculture law next year to allow land owners to lease or consign their farm lands, or to skip a cultivation season – preferential treatments for exceptional cases of inability to farm, such as land inheritance and moving. Such measures are designed to promote “scale of economy” in the agriculture sector by concentrating the supply of land to farmers solely dedicated to farming.

Jin-Hup Song jinhup@donga.com