[Koo Bon-young Column] Agriculture Cannot Be Revived by the Dogma of the 'Land-to-the-Tiller Principle'

The alarm warning of hollowed-out rural communities and the disappearance of local regions is growing louder. The national birth rate has been stuck at rock bottom for a long time, and the trend of population concentration in the Seoul Metropolitan Area shows no sign of reversing. The number of people moving back to the countryside to replace the aging rural workforce has also plunged for several years. To make matters worse, even young people who had painstakingly relocated and settled in provincial areas are now returning to the Seoul Metropolitan Area. Just look at the analysis released late last month by the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics & Trade (KIET). It found that one out of three young people who moved to Non-metropolitan areas failed to last even two years before making a "U-turn" back to the capital region.
A few days ago, when I visited my hometown village for the first time in a while, I felt the seriousness of the problem firsthand. It was hard enough to find anyone in their 40s or 50s, but even friends of my own generation—the first baby boomers born between 1955 and 1963—were nowhere to be seen. Most had left for the cities amid industrialization and the wave of rural-to-urban migration. I stopped by the home of an elderly relative. The couple, now in their 90s and 80s, handed me a basket full of canola greens they had painstakingly grown in their small garden. When they told me that the rice paddies and fields farther from the house had become too much for them to manage, my heart ached.
Yet the political class seems to be living in a different world. With the June 3 local elections approaching, they are focused solely on the campaign battle. They are not even pretending to look for solutions to save collapsing rural communities. Even candidates for governor and mayor in Non-metropolitan areas show little interest in the issue.
In fact, President Lee Jae-myung ignited the controversy on April 24 with a highly combustible remark about farmland management. At a meeting of the State Council of South Korea, he pointed out that farmland had become a target of speculation, driving up prices and making it difficult for people to return to farming or rural life. He went further and announced a plan to conduct a full-scale survey of non-cultivated farmland and to order compulsory sales if any illegal activity was found. As public sentiment in the field turned sour, he partially backed down, saying that farmland owned by elderly farmers or inherited land would not be subject to forced sale. Even so, the damage was done.
President Lee Jae-myung stated, "Farmland management in our country has become such a mess that it has turned into a target for speculation." That is only half right and half wrong. It is true that speculative demand has poured into farmland in the Seoul Metropolitan Area, especially around new towns with strong development prospects. The Korea Land and Housing Corporation real estate scandal (LH scandal) that broke under the Moon Jae-in administration in 2021 is a case in point. Employees of the Korea Land and Housing Corporation (LH) were caught acquiring farmland under false pretenses and engaging in large-scale real estate speculation.
But the reality in many Non-metropolitan areas is very different. Compared with the nationwide rise in land prices, the average increase in local farmland prices has been extremely modest, and such land is often hard to sell at all. In many cases, due to the aging farm population, landowners cannot even find tenants willing to cultivate their fields for free, without paying rent. This is why many farmers on the ground have reacted with cynicism to the president’s talk of compulsory sales of speculative farmland.
Along with his pledge to eradicate farmland speculation, President Lee Jae-myung also invoked the land-to-the-tiller principle. This principle is explicitly stated in Article 121(1) of the Constitution of the Republic of Korea, and its spirit dates back to the First Constitution of the Republic of Korea (1948). Following the idea that "only those who farm the land may own it," President Syngman Rhee carried out land reform in Korea based on a policy of compensated forfeiture and non-free distribution. In the post-liberation era, when ideological conflict between left and right was intense, the land-to-the-tiller principle was a masterstroke. Thanks to it, many tenant farmers, at a time when there was virtually no industry outside agriculture, were able to transform themselves—albeit on a small scale—into owner-farmers.
Today, however, the land-to-the-tiller principle is effectively a dead letter. As of 2024, farm households account for only 3.8% of the total population. Even among them, for various reasons including population aging, fewer than half actually farm their own land, and roughly half of all farmland is owned by non-farmers. The land-to-the-tiller principle, which once helped sweep away the feudal remnants of the landlord–tenant farming system, now feels like an outdated dogma. It no longer serves as any kind of lever to stop the hollowing out of rural communities.
In this context, we should look at how Japan, which experienced rural population aging before us, responded. Rather than clinging to the land-to-the-tiller principle, Japan opened the door to corporate farming and promoted farmland leasing. This policy expanded both the total cultivated area and the number of young farmers, achieving a twofold benefit.
If we can no longer turn the waterwheel of rural revitalization with the bygone stream of the land-to-the-tiller principle, then what should we do? The key is to ensure that farmland is actually used for agriculture, regardless of who owns it. This is why a shift in thinking toward a land-to-the-tiller use principle is urgently needed. If the government cannot afford to buy up land with public funds, it is absurd to push for compulsory sales of unsold farmland in remote areas. Instead, policymakers should consider ways to invigorate farmland leasing, such as expanding direct payments and other incentives for tenants. Above all, we are now in the era of artificial intelligence (AI). It is time to recognize that we must foster corporate-style Smart Farming, not cling to small-scale owner-farming.
kby777@fnnews.com Reporter