Using law enforcing thematic maps for public announcements in South Korea

The National Assembly of Korea enacted the Framework Act on the Regulation of Land Use (FARLU) in December 2005 in order to ensure the public’s right to know and to minimize any infringement of individual property rights in the event that the Government must regulate private (just so that individual isn’t used twice in a sentence) land property rights for public interest purposes. In addition, the National Assembly specified that it is mandatory to compile topographical drawings indicating the boundary, area, and range of land use regulated regions as a means for the realization of legislation purposes, and also to make these public so that the topographical drawings can have legal effect. This is a very rare case, and significant in that maps are not simply a reference for decision-making, but they are used as a Law Enforcing Thematic Map (LETM). This paper introduces unique cases in which LETM is used as a map having legal effect, analyzes the problems related to LETM, and presents improvement plans. In an exhaustive survey of LETMs, which were changed and published from the year 2007 to 2014 for metropolitan areas of Korea in order to analyze any LETM problems, it was found that cases of discrepancy in boundaries, which may result in legal disputes over land ownership violations, accounted for 16% of disputes (554 cases), which is an issue too serious to be neglected. Therefore, this study proposes technical and policy alternatives to address such problems caused by discrepancies in boundaries. This study may be illuminating for people engaged in LETMs and helpful for the improvement of LETM policies.