When Landowner Unreachable, Official Notice Delivered and Forced Expropriation Carried Out... Court Says "No Problem"

In the process of promoting a compensation project for land where a park project had not been carried out for a long time, the court ruled that it was legitimate to proceed with compulsory acquisition through 'public notice delivery' after attempting to negotiate compensation but failing due to the absence of the landowner.

Seoul Administrative Court.

According to the legal community on the 13th, the Seoul Administrative Court, Administrative Division 11 (Chief Judge Kim Jun-young) recently ruled against plaintiff A in a lawsuit seeking to nullify the land expropriation decision filed against the Seoul Metropolitan Land Expropriation Committee.

A was the owner of part of the land in Dongjak-gu, Seoul, where the district office planned to create a neighborhood park. In June 2020, the district office announced the project implementation plan approval and attempted to negotiate land acquisition with A, but notices such as the compensation plan inspection announcement were not delivered to A due to closed doors and absence of occupants. The district office then served the compensation plan inspection announcement by public notice delivery (posting the documents when the address is unknown and considering them delivered to the party).

Subsequently, the district office applied to the Seoul Metropolitan Land Expropriation Committee for an expropriation decision. The expropriation decision refers to the procedure of forcibly acquiring ownership of specific property for public interest and transferring it to the state or a third party. In August 2022, the committee set the compensation amount at approximately 420 million KRW and made the expropriation decision to acquire A’s land.

In response, A filed an administrative lawsuit claiming that there were serious and obvious substantive and procedural defects in the expropriation decision. A argued, “The district office has not actually created a park on the land for decades, and since there is another park nearby, there was no need to create a park, yet the land was illegally expropriated for other purposes.” A also claimed, “The district office knew my actual address but did not properly deliver various notices and used public notice delivery, depriving me of the opportunity to express my opinion.”

However, the court did not accept A’s claims. First, the court pointed out, “Any illegality in the project approval decision itself must be challenged at the project approval stage,” and “At the expropriation decision stage, unless there are extraordinary circumstances that clearly render the project approval decision null and void due to serious and obvious defects, the expropriation decision cannot be canceled on the grounds of illegality or unfairness of the project approval decision.”

Regarding the procedural illegality claim, the court ruled, “The district office sent notices regarding loss compensation negotiations three times by registered mail to A’s registered address and also provided opportunities to inspect the expropriation application documents and submit opinions,” and “The district office searched for the delivery location using ordinary investigation methods, and based on the evidence submitted by A alone, it cannot be concluded that the district office knowingly sent the documents to the wrong address.”

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