ABSTRACT
Korea has gone through industrialization and urbanization in a relatively short time. As the price of land has been rapidly rising, landowners have reaped windfall gains that have aggravated the inequity in income and wealth distribution. The government set up the Land Gongkaenyum Study Committee in 1989 to formulate new policy measures, which were aimed at solving the land problem, and introduced the residential landownership limit, the development gains charge, and the excess land profits tax, based in part on the committee's report. Korea experienced one of the world's most rapid industrializations, radically transforming a traditional, rural, agriculture-based socioeconomic structure into a modern industrial economy centered around urban areas. Industrialization and the consequent urbanization created a disproportionate demand for different types of land in various locations. The price of land for housing rises mainly because there is excess demand, and land policy changes can alleviate the housing problem by removing the bottlenecks to increase the land supply.
