Land Use Regulations To Be Greatly Alleviated Starting Next Year

Starting July of next year, it will be compulsory to comprise the opinions of local people in advance when designating special usage zones or areas such as agricultural promotion areas, military facility protection zones, as well as others.

Also, land regulations will be alleviated to a great degree as similar special zones will be integrated and merged and ineffective special zones will be removed.

The government formulated the streamlining plans regarding land regulations with the above contents at the economic minister meeting held at the Central Governmental Complex in Jongno, Seoul. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and Economics Lee Hun-jae led this June 25 meeting.

As the first step of the plan, the government has decided to simplify and enhance the transparency of land regulations by developing the “Land Usage Regulation Standard Law” this year and will put it into effect starting July 2005.

Therefore, 181 special usage zones that regulate land usage among all the 298 special usage zones in the nation, currently set by 13 ministries and 112 laws, will be restructured to a great degree.

In addition, reports of land usage regulation designations and its operations will be written every five years in order to help improve the zone system.

Along with this, the procedure of listening to the local people’s opinions through measures such as public hearings will be compulsory when designating special usage zones that establish land use regulations.

When building factory or lodging facilities, it will be compulsory to create a “regulation instruction” in which the authorization process is clearly explained, and the authorization and approval procedures will be simplified to a great degree.

The government also decided to review the plan to centralize all the special land usage zones into part of the national land planning law as the second step after looking into what the first-step streamlining plans for land usage regulation has accomplished.

This means that the nation will set the uses of land according to its natural conditions and policy necessities in advance. The special usage areas are city areas, residence areas, agriculture promotion areas, and others, and the usage zones are scenic areas, grand view areas, and others.

Jong sik Kong Chi-Young Shin kong@donga.com higgledy@donga.com