Features of civil regulation of property and other private land rights as the basis of sustainable development (the experience of the Republic of Korea)

The article deals with the analytical review of the Korean Civil Code's provisions in the field of regulating right of property and other private rights to the land lots. The author proceeds from the statement of the fact of priority in the domestic sphere as an object of the comparative and legal analysis the legislation and legal practice of the European states despite the fact that the similar experience of the Asian-Pacific Region countries is very significant. It is noted in the article that the Civil Code of the Republic of Korea, in spite of huge influence of European and American legal schools on its creation and development is to a farther extent a result of "natural evolution" i.e. mostly created by means of the analysis and synthesis of the legal practice and common law. The Korean Civil Code does not detach the regulation of the land relations in a special charter or part. At the same time the number and amount of the legal rules directly or indirectly connected to the land are ruther numerous. The article analyses the rules of the Civil Code of the Republic of Korea about the restriction of the right of property (in particular to the amount of the right of property, demand to use of the adjacent land lots, prohibition of the harm to the adjacent land lots, rules about land lots infrastructure etc.). The rules about correlation of the land and water usage laws are described (rules about natural water stream, right to the drainage works, right to the request of the restoration works, rules about rain water, right to the surplus wate evacuation, rules about the change of the water stream's direction, right to the dam construction, right to the river usage etc.). The article reviews the rules about direct territorial interaction of the land lots and their delimitation (right to the construction of the land mark or boundary, rules about joint property to the land mark and so on). The legal institutes of the superficies, servitude and land rent are dealt with thoroughly. The special attention is pay to such unique legal phenomenon of the Korean private law as "deposit rent" (chongsenwon). In practice the institute of the deposit rent means passing some immovable property into the long-term rent on the basis of a huge money deposit made by the lessee (matching with the market property price). During the rent period the lessee does not make any other rent payments, more over after the rent period the full deposit is reimbursed to him by lessor. The lessor's profit constitutes bank interests or some other benefit from the deposit that he could get during the rent period. At the end of the article the author comes to the conclusion that the regulations of the land relations in the Republic of Korea deserve the deep and close attention.

Keywords

Authors

References