산지관리 법제의 현황과 개선과제

Abstract

The government has changed mountains which became bare across the country after the liberation from Japan and the Korean War into ones filled with trees through afforestation policies. As a consequence, Korea is now credited as a world-class model nation that has succeeded in afforestation. However, mountainous districts have been managed mainly for preservation so far and have been only allowed to be restrictively used, which has kept mountainous districts from being systematically or comprehensively managed across the whole land. An increase in demand for urban land according to rapid urbanization continuously demands the need for efficient use and development of mountainous districts. Meanwhile, once mountainous districts are destroyed, the subsequent impact is so huge and it takes a long time to recover from such destroyed state; therefore, sustainable management is required to secure harmony between preservation and utilization. As the pursuit of “Green Growth” has recently become the interest of the times, the efficient use of mountainous districts based on sustainability has begun to be regarded as a critical task even in terms of territorial use and real estate policies. While afforestation was of great interest as a basic resource in the past industrial society, the area and range of forest administration is gradually expanded at the present day. Not only may every forest resource play a meaningful role as the country’s economic growth engine, but tangible and intangible asset values which forest resources can create are also increasing as never imagined. Considering such tangible and intangible values of forest administration, we need to historically examine the change in forest policy paradigms from macro perspectives in order to renew the perception of forests and to map a desirable future direction. It seems to be unreasonable to emphasize only forest preservation in Korea of which the territory is mostly covered with mountains; accordingly, “development and preservation” or “preservation through development” is needed. For sustainable development balancing between development and preservation, plans and policies for strategic land management are required. Like this, rapid environmental changes surrounding mountainous districts shed new light on mountainous districts, which have been just regarded as the areas to be preserved and have been only used fragmentarily, as new land resources. Furthermore, it is time to think about the establishment of new roles of mountainous districts as new land resources.