The site of Gwangju's military airport and surrounding areas, where a semiconductor cluster in the Honam region is planned, will be designated as a land transaction permit zone for two years starting the 14th.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) said on the 9th that it will designate the areas surrounding the planned site of the Honam semiconductor advanced national industrial complex as a land transaction permit zone, following deliberation by the Central Urban Planning Committee. The designated area covers 364.19 square kilometers across Gwangju's Gwangsan-gu, Dong-gu, Seo-gu, Nam-gu and Buk-gu, as well as Naju, Jangseong and Hwasun. The measure came just 10 days after the government's announcement of a large-scale investment in the semiconductor cluster on the 29th of last month, and is intended to prevent land speculation aimed at development windfalls.
Once an area becomes a land transaction permit zone, transactions of land exceeding a certain size require permission from the relevant mayor, county governor or district office head. Because residential land requires the buyer to live there, and commercial or industrial land requires actual business operations for a transaction to be permitted, purchasing land for investment rather than genuine use becomes difficult.
Earlier, Gwangju's military airport was selected as the site for the Honam semiconductor cluster project, one of the government's three mega projects, raising concerns about an influx of speculative demand driven by development expectations. MOLIT explained that it pursued the land transaction permit zone designation procedure to preemptively block land price increases and speculative transactions.
