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A new survey has found that 32% of all land owned by households belonged to the top 1% of households last year. For corporations, the equivalent figure was 76%.

According to materials obtained on Wednesday by Democratic Party lawmaker Park Hong-keun from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the 141,300 households belonging to the top 1% owned an average of 105,633 square meters (26 acres) of land, accounting for 32.2% of all land owned by households.

The average value of land owned by the top 1% was 5.4676 billion won (US$4.59 million). These figures represent a 0.5 percentage point increase in proportional terms and close to a 900 million won (US$756,000) increase in value over 2017 — 31.7% and 4.582 billion won (US$3.7 million), respectively. When the scope is broadened to include the top 10% of households (1.41 million), the proportion rises to 77.5%

The imbalance was even greater among corporations.

The top 1% possess the lion’s share of all land owned by firms, with 76.1%. The average quantity of land owned by the top 1% was 2.245 million square meters (554.7 acres), with an average value of 4.425 billion won (US$3.7 million). Compared to 2017, the proportion rose 0.5 percentage points from 75.6%, while the average value jumped by more than 88 billion won from 3.544 billion won (US$2.9 million).

Corporations belonging to the top 10% (23,610) owned 92.6% of the total land owned by corporations.

“There is a significant amount of public hostility toward land speculation and massive amounts of unearned income,” Park noted. “We must consider introducing a land tax that covers existing property taxes and the comprehensive real estate holding tax so that profits earned are given back for the benefit of all citizens.”

By Lee Jeong-hun, staff reporter

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