Seoul gives owners of flagged farmland 55 days to file into the farmland bank

Divide 2.84 million flagged parcels by the 27% share they represent and the survey's denominator comes to roughly 10.5 million parcels ^[20]. Spread 1.36 million hectares across that count and the average parcel runs about 0.13 hectares, some 1,300 square metres ^[21]. At that size most of the flagged universe looks like what the ministry puts in its customary category: land entrusted to a neighbour because the owner is too old to work it ^[1].

The sorting is done by two dates and a filing. The special adjustment period now runs to November 15, 55 days from the September 21 announcement ^[8][4][22]. Inside it, an owner who has held the land three years or more and applies for lease trusteeship is taken out of supplementary inspection, and the case is not treated as a legal violation ^[9]. A buyer who took title inside those three years cannot get that exclusion ^[23].

The exclusion has a price. Trusteeship converts the informal arrangement into an official lease, and Yoon Won-seup, director general for agricultural policy at the ministry, said the plan means "existing lease relationships will be maintained as they are, while being converted into legal and official lease relationships through the farmland bank" ^[12][2]. For customary leases, filing defers the imposition of a disposal obligation ^[10]. Fallow land that cannot be worked because of inheritance or age can be restored directly or put under management trusteeship, and the ministry is reviewing the same route for land left idle because no buyer could be found ^[11].

Nothing was softened on the other side of the line. Permit-zone land bought on a false farming plan and then left fallow or leased out, agricultural corporations that bought for a real estate business, and auction buyers who split ownership stakes without farming all stay under current law as it stands ^[13]. Illegal conversion inside an agricultural promotion zone, storage yards and campgrounds among the examples, can draw restoration orders ^[14]. Intent is judged on field inspections and circumstantial records ^[15], and those field inspections have been running since August ^[7]. Every trusteeship filing subtracts a case from that queue.

Political circles argued the survey was chilling transactions and pushing prices lower, and pressed for supplementary steps ^[17]. The government has rejected any direct link between the survey and a market slowdown, citing transaction volumes and price trends ^[18]. Both positions survive this announcement, which Sedaily's account describes as less a change in the government's existing principles than a presentation of specific procedures ^[19].

I would expect the count of trusteeship applications filed by November 15 to be the most direct evidence available on how much of that 27% was custom and how much was speculation, since nothing in the initial survey has been confirmed as a violation ^[6]. The counter is that a filing is cheap insurance: owners who would have passed inspection file anyway, and the number overstates the customary share. The term with the clearest effect on what rural land is worth is the other one, retroactive approval for illegal conversions that meet certain requirements ^[2], because a storage yard that gets approved is worth more than one under a restoration order ^[14]. The ministry did not publish those requirements. The special measures act is due by the end of this year ^[3].