Unauthorized State-Owned Land Occupation… Penalties Slashed?

[Anchor]

The government leases state-owned land and collects rental fees. However, it has been confirmed that the Korea Asset Management Corporation (KAMCO), which is tasked with managing these properties, has been reducing the penalty fees imposed on individuals and entities occupying state-owned land without authorization.

Reporter Lee Tae-gwon investigated this exclusive report.

[Reporter]

This is a private parking lot near Gimhae International Airport in Busan.

Spanning 507 square meters, or about 150 pyeong, this plot of land is owned by the state.

It was revealed that the business had only been paying lease fees for a 70-square-meter portion of this state-owned land.

The remaining 437 square meters had been occupied and operated without a contract for at least five years.

[Unauthorized Occupant: That lower section was part of a construction zone during past projects. I thought lease fees were only being charged for the area excluding that part. So I thought it was twenty pyeong....]

In January, KAMCO, the agency responsible for managing state-owned land, confirmed the unauthorized occupation and imposed a penalty fee of approximately 133 million won.

However, when the business requested a reduction, claiming it was a small business, the penalty was slashed to about one-third of the original amount.

KAMCO cited a Ministry of Finance and Economy notice enacted in 2020 as the basis for this decision.

To ease the burden on small businesses, the relevant notice allows state-owned land lease fees to be lowered from 3% to 1% of the property value, with reductions capped at up to 20 million won per year.

Because penalty fees were calculated based on these reduced lease rates, even unauthorized occupants ended up receiving the benefits.

Last year, the Board of Audit and Inspection announced that 79,000 parcels, or 10% of all state-owned land managed by KAMCO, were illegally occupied. However, KAMCO does not separately track how much penalty revenue has been lost through such reductions.

[Park Min-gyu / National Policy Committee Member (Democratic Party): The problem is that a system originally created to help struggling small businesses has led to unjustified penalty reductions for unauthorized occupants of state-owned land.]

KAMCO maintains that reducing penalties is necessary to encourage unauthorized occupants to clear the illegal occupation and transition into legitimate contracts.

The Ministry of Finance and Economy stated that lowering penalties even for unauthorized occupants goes against public sentiment, adding that it will raise the criteria for calculating penalties and reexamine imposition standards.

(Video by Lee Byung-joo | Video Editing by Cho Mu-hwan | Graphics by Kang Yoon-jung)

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