"Our Land After All"... Yongin-si's Hidden Property Discovery Team Gains Attention

Secured Ownership of 376,000㎡... Amounting to 125.3 Billion KRW
Local Governments Follow Suit with Benchmarking Amid Consecutive Achievements

'Gugal Lespia,' a complex cultural facility located in Gugal Natural Ecological Park by the Singal Stream in Gugal-dong, Giheung-gu, Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do. Last year, the Yongin-si Public Property Discovery Team found a document over 20 years old related to this project. The document contained details of the Ministry of Strategy and Finance’s decision to transfer part of the project site to Yongin-si free of charge at the time of the project.

Employees of the Yongin City Public Property Excavation Team are discussing ways to discover non-tax revenue with officials from Incheon City who visited Yongin City Hall.
[Photo by Yongin City]

Based on this document, the staff locked themselves in the underground archives and thoroughly searched for related documents, including negotiation papers with the government at that time. Ultimately, based on this, Yongin-si received a refund of 3.2 billion KRW from the government.

The Public Property Discovery Team also found that Company A had agreed to transfer ownership of a road to the city during the development project in Dunjeon-ri, Pogok-eup, but failed to fulfill this obligation for 26 years. Later, after negotiations with Company A, the city was able to secure ownership of the 878㎡ road site.

Established in 2020, Yongin-si’s Public Property Discovery Team is becoming a hot topic among frontline local governments. As the first basic local government to create such a team, it is being praised as a boon to Yongin-si’s finances.

The main task of the Public Property Discovery Team is to find hidden city-owned properties such as real estate. A representative example is discovering cases where promises to transfer ownership of roads and other real estate, pledged to be donated to the city during private development projects, were not fulfilled.

In fact, besides the Dunjeon-ri road site, the team confirmed that ownership of road sites in Kimryangjang-dong, Cheoin-gu (1,948㎡), and Dongcheon-dong, Suji-gu (2,005㎡) had not been transferred for the same reason. Lee Byung-min, head of Yongin-si’s Public Property Discovery Team, said, "While some ownerships are secured through negotiations with companies, some lands require complicated procedures such as lawsuits."

The total city-owned property discovered by the Public Property Discovery Team so far amounts to 376,000㎡, equivalent to 52 soccer fields. When converted to monetary value, it amounts to 125.3 billion KRW. This is based on official announced prices, so the actual property value is estimated to be much higher.

Due to such proactive administration, Yongin-si received the Minister of the Interior and Safety Award at the 'Korea Local Finance Awards' last year, as well as awards for 'Excellence in Public Property Management and Utilization' and 'Best Case in Gyeonggi-do Non-Tax Revenue.'

Other local governments are also benchmarking this initiative. Earlier this month, officials from Incheon City’s Local Tax Policy Division visited the department, and in June, accounting staff from Siheung City also came to learn the know-how of public property discovery.

A Yongin-si official said, “We are pleased to share the know-how of the Public Property Discovery Team with other local governments. We will continue to actively transfer our expertise with the mindset of protecting public property for the citizens.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.