Survey of State-owned Lands and the Land Survey Project in the Late Joseon and Early Japanese Colonial Periods

(Hyean Publishing, 2019)

Choe, Wonkyu,

(Professor Emeritus, Pusan National University)

As part of the Modern Korean Land and Farmer Series, Survey of State-owned Lands and the Land Survey Project in the Late Joseon and Early Japanese Colonial Periods analyzes the process of land surveys that were conducted since the time of Gabo and Gwangmu Reforms (1894-1896 and 1896-1904 respectively) through the early part of the Japanese colonial period (1910-1932). The land surveys carried out at this time were not dissimilar to each other in their attempt to survey traditional land rights and incorporate them into modern law. However, the surveys done by the Joseon government and the Japanese authorities differed fundamentally from each other, as while those of the Gabo-Gwangmu administrations were intended as a platform for the modern reform of the Korean nation, those of the Japanese colonial administration were meant to facilitate imperialist accumulation of capital. This book focuses on whether or not ownership rights appraised by the Japanese authorities at the time of the State-owned Lands Survey (Gugyuji Josa) and the Land Survey Project (Toji Josa Saeop) were already exclusionary in nature and the surveys merely substantiated this reality. It also aims to elucidate the differences between the Gabo-Gwangmu administrations’ Public Land Survey (Gongto Josa) and the Japanese authorities’s Survey of Military and Station lands (Yeokdunto Josa). The content is as follows.

The Gabo Seungchong order of 1895 executed by the Gabo administration took steps to lift the tax exemption of public lands (gongto) and have tenant farmers pay land tax (gyeolse) to the Ministry of Finance (Takjibu) and rental fees (dojo) to the office in charge. The Eulmi Sapan project of 1895 aimed to officialize the cultivation right (gyeongjakgweon) as a real right. The disputes that emerged at this time may appear to be an ownership issue, but in reality, they were disputes over the amount of taxes to be collected. The Audit of 1897 (Gwangmu Sageom) bolstered the Public Land Strengthening Policy (Gongto Ganghwachaek), while following the direction of the Gabo administration’s policies. Such survey policy was also extended to private lands during the Gwangmu Land Measurement Project (Gwangmu Yangjeon Sa’eop). Starting together with landlords, the results of the survey were recorded in the Land and Tax Register (Yangan), and an official, government-approved certificate of land ownership, called the Daehan (Korean) Empire Certificate of Title for Wet and Dry Fields (Daehanjeguk Jeondap Gwangye), was issued to the landlord. The Gwangmu administration recognized customary usufructuary rights and cultivation rights as real rights, and at the same time granted the ownership rights to the landlord. The Daehan Empire attempted to enact a law officializing the right to cultivate (equivalent to the tenants’ rights) in the Real Estate Rights Act (Budongsan’gweon Sogwanbeop), but the Japanese authorities contradicted this and proclaimed the Land and House Certification Regulation (Toji Ga’ok Jeungmyeong Gyuchik) instead.

The Japanese Imperial authorities implemented the land survey with the intention of assimilating Korea’s land system into that of Japan. This meant that among the various real rights such as the right to own and the right to cultivate, the latter was violently eliminated while the former was given the status of exclusivity (bordering on exclusive ownership). First, during the time of the Residency-General (1905-1910), all land that was not privately owned was proclaimed as state-owned land and the State-Owned Uncultivated Land Use Law (Gugyu Miganji Iyongbeop) and the Forest Law (Samnimbeop) were proclaimed to deprive farmers of their free right to use those lands. Then implemented was the task of surveying and labelling public land as Military and Station lands(yeokdunto), and then appraising them as state-owned lands with exclusive ownership rights. The Middle renter’s (Jungdabju) right to the rented land (dojigweon) was treated as an equivalent to the right of tenancy (sojakgweon) or the right of lease (imchagweon). The Ministry of Finance did return lands that had been earlier offered to the landlord (tutakji) and lands that had been misassigned and mixed up with other lands (hontaripji), but those whose customary usufructuary rights had been taken away or those who held true ownership rights vehemently opposed this, and fierce disputes broke out regarding state and private ownerships. The Japanese authorities’ State-owned Land Survey established the right of taxation (sujogweon) as an exclusive ownership right, while establishing other usufructuary rights as a claims right (chaegweon).

Through the proclamation of the Land Survey Law (Toji Josabeop) in 1910 and the Land Survey Order (Toji Josa’ryeong) in 1912, the Japanese authorities implemented the Land Survey Project. In the land survey, a notice system (tongji jedo) was applied to state-owned lands, and a declaration(reporting) system (sin’go jedo) was applied to privately-owned lands. Lands already established as state-owned as evidenced by the State-owned Land Register (Gugyuji Daejang) would be announced as such via a notice, while privately-owned lands were to be obligatorily reported by the landowner. Regarding collective ownership, only corporate bodies were recognized; Traditional collectives such as villages (dongni), lineage organizations (jongjung), or mutual assistance societies (gye) were not recognized as having land ownership rights. Essentially, only ownership rights were to be declared. As a result, customary usufructuary rights such as partial ownership rights (like Dojigweon) slowly began to disappear. The first result of the land survey was that although some public lands were returned as privately-owned land, public lands and unowned lands were generally re-designated as state-owned lands. The second result was the granting of legal legitimacy to lands purchased at giveaway prices by the Japanese through either illegal means that ignored domestic and international law or through the mobilization of state and/or personal power. Judgments of disputes that arose at this time were dealt with through the evaluation of the disputed land (bunjaengji simsa) and the application for objection (bulbok sincheong). Although the number of disputes accounted for only about one percent of the total land, there was no shortage of cases in which a Japanese landowner was in a single dispute against hundreds of individuals or the residents of several villages. The regions where disputes frequently occurred included river basins such as that of the Yeongsan-gang, Nakdong-gang, Man’gyeong-gang, and Jae’ryeong-gang Rivers, urban areas, island areas, as well as state-owned lands in Gyeonggi-do and Hwanghae-do Provinces.

The vast majority of land disputes were over state and private ownership. In the case of a surveying error, the land was returned, but unless the office in charge admitted that there was an error and corrected it themselves, the Interim Land Survey Bureau (Imsi Toji Josaguk) did not independently refute the appraisal. Regarding applications for objection brought to the High Commission on Land Survey (Godeung Toji Josa Wiweonhoe), apart from cases when there was no report or witness, or cases where no notice was made in the first place and the land was thus excluded from appraisal, most of them were cases in which the land was appraised differently from how they were reported, or just wrongly appraised. (In other words, cases of fraudulence or error.) However, the objection applications also served as an opportunity for Japanese individuals (who had been divested of their land through a disadvantageous judgment of the appraisal) to reclaim their rights, and the Japanese Government-General seemingly assisted those individuals’ efforts against the Koreans. As a result of reviews following the objection applications, Japanese individuals’ privately-owned land and state-owned lands significantly increased. Regarding the matter of settling land disputes, the Japanese authorities implemented a system of administrative handling (haengjeong cheobun) in Korea, which granted exclusive decision-making rights to the executive-administrative office in charge, rather than to the judicial court, as was the case in Japan. On the basis of the exclusive ownership right established in Japanese civil law, the Japanese authorities invested the status of absoluteness (jeoldaeseong) and original acquisition (weonsi chwideuk) to ownership rights established by the aforementioned process. However, because the ownership rights were invested with attributes given by the colonial powers from above, they could also be forfeited or utilized as the colonial powers needed, through the Land Expropriation Order (Toji Suyongnyeong), which was invoked for militaristic objectives and the interests of monopolistic capitalism.

This book tried to criticially examine two previous opinions from the past. First is the opinion that have viewed the ownership rights that developed in the late Joseon period to have already been exclusive ownership rights, and argued that the Japanese Empire then surveyed and merely officialized them in its Land Survey Project (i.e. the Colonial Modernization Theory, which refutes claims of the Japanese Empire’s exploitative nature). Second is the opposite opinion based on the Korean academia’s earlier ownership-based perspective, which argues that the Japanese authorities willfully perpetrated authoritarian exploitation. What should be attempted in the future is a systematic review of the relationship between the landowner and farmers on private lands, and especially the farmers’ rights over lands, including the cultivation rights, in the Gwangmu Reform period.