Land Locked for 70 Years Finally Freed... Jung-gu Resolves Tangled Ownership Issue in Sindang-dong Tteokbokki Alley Through Proactive Administration

All 10 Owners Reach Agreement... First Case in Seoul

The long-standing land issue in Muhak-dong, Seoul, where property rights could not even be exercised for 70 years due to joint ownership dating back to the period immediately after Liberation, has finally been resolved through proactive administration by Jung-gu (District Mayor Kim Gilseong).

Muhak 1 Jigu. Provided by Jung-gu.

Muhak 1 District (around lot number 55 in Muhak-dong), near the Sindang-dong Tteokbokki Alley, has been jointly owned by 10 parties, including the state, across six parcels of land ever since the state sold the land in the form of shared fractional ownership right after Liberation. As a result, residents were effectively unable to exercise their property rights, including selling, developing, or creating mortgage liens.

In 2017, residents filed a lawsuit for partition of co-owned property and in 2021 obtained a ruling ordering that “four parcels of land be divided into private ownership and two parcels of road be divided into state ownership.” However, in 2019, the Ministry of Government Legislation issued a statutory interpretation that “public-law regulations apply to partitions by court ruling,” which again blocked the land partition. The boundaries set by the ruling did not meet the lot subdivision area standards under Article 57 of the Building Act. This left them in a situation where they had a court ruling but could not make use of it.

Since 2022, Jung-gu had been requesting related legal amendments, but when that proved difficult, the district began reviewing the use of the “Special Act on Cadastral Resurvey.” After obtaining legal advice and undergoing preliminary consulting on proactive administration, the district became able to pursue a small-scale cadastral resurvey project in August last year.

The project process was not smooth either. The boundaries stated in the ruling did not match the actual boundaries on the ground, and in some parcels the surveyed area turned out to be smaller. To ensure that the area of every parcel of land would not be reduced below the right area stated in the ruling, Jung-gu conducted on-site verification three times and, after about a month of intensive work, completed a reasonable boundary-setting plan.

Afterward, officials personally visited each landowner one by one to explain the new boundary plan. Whenever a visit was requested, they went out to the site, and for owners living overseas they adjusted for time differences and continued consultations late into the night, ultimately securing the consent of all owners.

The draft cadastral confirmation record prepared on the basis of the agreed boundaries was approved in its original form by the Seoul Jung-gu Boundary Determination Committee on October 31 last year, and on February 12 this year the district requested the registry office to change the land descriptions, bringing to a close a project that had taken 1 year and 7 months. This is the first such case in Seoul.

Jung-gu District Mayor Kim Gilseong said, “This is a model case in which we protected residents’ property rights and resolved conflict through proactive administration and communication,” adding, “We will continue to do our best to remove unreasonable regulations and protect residents’ rights.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.