The Land Transaction Licence System of Korea was first institutionalized on the purpose of promoting balanced development of the country and preventing drastic increase of land prices through the Act on Special Measure for Building Temporary Administr...
The Land Transaction Licence System of Korea was first institutionalized on the purpose of promoting balanced development of the country and preventing drastic increase of land prices through the Act on Special Measure for Building Temporary Administrative Capital, which Act, after 29th amendment, was incorporated into the National Land Planning and Utilization Act of 2002 together with the Civil Planning Act and the National Land Planning Act that transplanted the current form of the Land Transaction Licence System.
When the Land Transaction Licence System on the purpose of promoting balanced development of the country and preventing speculation was enacted, some commentators viewed it as unconstitutional by reason that it infringed the private property right under the Constitution. Taking into the social and public nature of the land property right, however, the order of land transaction should not have to be entrusted to the market based on private autonomy. Therefore, I believe that the Land Transaction Licence System that regulates speculative transactions of certain size for certain period within certain area is not in itself unconstitutioanl.
Article 118.6 of the National Land Planning and Utilization Act says “... any land transaction agreements without license shall not become effective,” thereby raising controversies on the effects of land transaction agreements before such license was issued.
The fact that this Act specifically nullifies a land transaction agreement before the license has brought up various issues about the legal nature of the license including what is the legal meaning of the license, is it authorizational or permissive or what is its position in a juristic act. In answering whether it is authorizational or permissive, I would say that it has both aspects of authorization and permission at the same time.
From the view point of requirement theory, majority of spectators see it as a requirement of effectiveness not of validity. However, some offer that it should be seen as a special requirement based on a different classification that classifies requirements of a juristic act into general and special requirements.
The classification used by the majority, i.e. requirements of validity and effectiveness, is more or less abstract and notional. Therefore, I believe that the Land Transaction Licence shall be deemed to be a special requirement so that a land transaction agreement shall be valid if and when general requirements are met even before the license was obtained on the basis of the minority classification, i.e. general and special requirements.
In addition, there are various theories and opinions of precedents as to whether a land transaction agreement is effective or not before the license. Some precedents deemed that any land transaction agreement before the license shall be absolutely invalid, others deemed that the contractual action was effective, all of which brought jurisprudential confusion. After all, the Supreme Court in 1994 by the collegiate panel of all Justices held that a land transaction agreement was fluidly null.
According to the theory of Effective Contractual Action, a land subject to a land transaction agreement becomes pledgeable even before the license, which allows a purchaser to preserve his/her right by a provisional disposition taking delivery of the land and to register his/her ownership when the restriction is removed, thereby circumventing the Land Transaction Licence System. In the mean time, according to Theory of Absolut Nullity which denies not only effect but validity of an agreement, it is problematic that there is no subject of license. Moreover, a seller may sell the same land to several purchasers and make effective the highest bidder by applying for the license without any punishment including dereliction of duty because any land transaction agreement is absolutely null, thereby failing to prevent speculations by the seller.
Therefore, by taking the license as a special requirement and as a predetermined condition precedent, I believe that a land transaction agreement before the license shall be deemed to be a juristic act with a condition precedent.
To conclude the jurisprucence of the Land Transaction Licence System, it is my belief that the license may be deemed as a special requirement and a land transaction agreement before the license shall be deemed as a juristic act with a predetermined condition precedent so that the National Land Planning and Utilization Act may achieve its targets and the interpretation may obtain coherence.