The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs said on the 1st it will conduct a full survey starting in May to determine whether the nation's 1,954,000 hectares (ha, about 20,000 square kilometers) of farmland are owned by farmers and are actually being cultivated. The land subject to the full survey accounts for 20% of Korea's national territory (100.5 million ha).
It follows President Lee Jae-myung's instruction at a Cabinet meeting on Feb. 24: "If necessary, conduct a full survey and order a forced sale for plots bought on the pretext of farming but left idle."
The agriculture ministry said it discussed the direction for pushing ahead with a full survey of farmland at a party-government consultative meeting with the Democratic Party of Korea on the day. The ministry said, "Starting in May, we will investigate, in two stages, the actual owners of farmland nationwide and whether it is being cultivated." This is the first time the government has launched a full nationwide farmland survey.
◇ Investigating land eligible for "forced sale disposition" first... hiring 5,000 personnel
The government will first survey 1.15 million ha of farmland acquired after the Farmland Act took effect in 1996 this year. With the enforcement of the Farmland Act, ownership of farmland by non-farmers was banned. Using farmland for non-agricultural purposes was also banned. If such acts are uncovered, the government can issue a forced disposition order.
These rules do not apply to those who bought farmland before the Farmland Act took effect. Accordingly, the government plans to first investigate the farmland on which it can take compulsory measures and issue dispositions. The government will conduct a full survey next year on 800,000 ha of land acquired before 1996. While it cannot issue forced disposition orders, it judged that building databases is necessary.
The survey will be conducted in two stages: a basic survey and an in-depth survey. The government and local governments will use existing administrative information, satellite images, and artificial intelligence (AI) analysis to verify the actual owners and whether cultivation is taking place. After that, dedicated personnel will visit selected plots on site to check whether farming is being done. Those surveyed to be selected include land within land transaction permit zones, farmland owned by foreigners, and land where violations were found in past farmland use status surveys.
The agriculture ministry said it will use 58.8 billion won allocated in the supplementary budget for this survey. The government the previous day submitted a supplementary budget bill totaling 26.2 trillion won to the National Assembly. The ruling party plans to pass the supplementary budget bill at a plenary session of the National Assembly on the 10th. The ministry plans to hire 5,000 survey personnel with the supplementary budget. The survey personnel will work at local governments nationwide and the National Agricultural Products Quality Management Service (NAQS).