1. Reason for Revision
With the revision to and enforcement of the Enforcement Rule of the Agricultural and Fishing Villages Improvement Act, which mainly includes an adjustment of the timing of payments of temporary usage fees or rents for filled land, etc., the proposed revision aim to rearrange the related subordinate regulations while supplementing the qualification requirements and rent calculation standards for filled land, etc. It also aims to improve the rental system for filled land, etc. by strengthening the sanctions to be imposed on violators of lease or rental contracts and the follow-up management system.
2. Main Contents
a. Improvement of the qualification requirements for incorporated that lease filled land, etc. (Subparagraph 9 of Article 2 and attached Table 2 of the draft)
○ The revision revises the definition of a "damaged corporation" so that the newly established damaged corporation* can participate in the lease as the status of the damaged corporation if it consists only of damaged farmers and fishermen.
* Persons entitled to temporary use in preference (Subparagraph 5 of Article 13 of the Enforcement Decree of the Agricultural and Fishing Villages Improvement Act): An agricultural partnership incorporated or agricultural company incorporated comprised of farmers and fishermen who have suffered a loss due to the implementation of a project for creating the relevant filled land, etc.
○ The revision supplements the criteria for eligibility for leasing by requiring corporations that participate in lease agreements to register their farming or fishing business information.
b. Adjustment of the timing of payments of usage fees for filled land, etc. and expansion of the targets for installment payment of the sale price* (Article 12 (8), Article 16 (5), and Article 19 (3) of the draft)
* The regulations have been improved by reflecting the revision to Article 6 (3) and Article 8 (1) of the Enforcement Rules of the Agricultural and Fishing Villages Improvement Act.
○ ➊ The revision allows timing of payments temporary usage fees and rent to be adjusted if the project contractor and the tenant agree to it.
○ ➋ The revision provides that the sale price can be paid in installments if the buyer wishes.
* (Current) ➊ Available for the cultivation or installation of solar energy facilities, and ➋ if the target property is agricultural land and the purchaser is a full-time farmer, etc.
c. Adjustment of the lower limit of lease area per tenant corporation (Article 16 (3) of the draft)
○ The lease area per corporation is loosened from a minimum of 20 hectares or more to 5 hectares or more in consideration of corporate demand.
* As determined by the local “Filled Land Management and Disposal Review Committee” to reflect the conditions of each parcel of reclaimed land.
d. Newspaper method of announcing sales replaced with the method of uploading announcements to the information processing system (Onbid) (Article 17 (1) of the draft)
e. Reinforcement of post-lease contract management and supplement of sanctions for violations (Article 27 (1) and attached Table 4 of the draft)
○ The revision increases the number of lease surveys (once per year or more → four or more times), and terminates contracts without any opportunity to correct violations, such as fraudulent contracting, subletting, and transfers of farming rights.*
* (Current) Sanctions can be avoided if the violation is corrected by citing justifiable reasons and self-cultivation.
f. Establishment of administrative provisions to register as a fund-owned property when ownership is listed in the register of state-owned properties for preservation (Article 33 (5) of the draft)
g. Complementation of standards for calculating temporary usage fees and rents for filled land, etc. (Attached Table 1 of the draft).
○ A separate rent rate is prescribed when Saemangeum-reclaimed land is leased for open field crop farming in consideration of its soil characteristics, i.e. it has a high sand content that facilitates drainage and desalination compared to other reclaimed land areas.
*(Current) 10% of rent for irrigated rice farming → (Revision) Calculated by applying the reclaimed land conversion rate and the desalination and ripening rate to the food crop farming rent rate.
