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Lee defends steps against property speculation in farmland ownership

Published: 25 Feb. 2026, 11:15

President Lee Jae Myung speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the Blue House in central Seoul on Feb. 24. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]

President Lee Jae Myung on Wednesday defended his push to tighten farmland ownership regulations aimed at curbing rural land speculation.

Lee instructed the Cabinet a day earlier to conduct a comprehensive inspection of agricultural land to verify whether owners are directly farming their property and to issue disposal orders if they are not.

"The land subject to a farmland disposal order does not refer to inherited farmland or land that has been left fallow due to unavoidable circumstances, such as old age," Lee wrote on the social media platform X.

"It refers to farmland that was acquired for speculative purposes by submitting a farming plan that claimed the buyer would cultivate it but is later left idle or leased out after purchase," he added.

He also noted Korea's first president, Rhee Syng-man, enshrined the land-to-the-tiller principle in the Constitution and carried out land reform in the 1950s that redistributed holdings from large landlords to tenant farmers.

Lee said the Rhee administration's land reform "laid the groundwork" for Korea's economic development, adding the former president was "not a communist."

Yonhap