Legal Issues of Legislation Related to Agricultural and Industrial Complexes
Authors:   National Public Law Review, Cho Sung Kyu 
Published: June 2023

The agricultural and industrial complex was introduced in 1983 with the aim of laying the industrial foundation for rural areas to solve problems such as population decline and job shortages in rural areas, which have been caused by the harmful effects of large-scale economic growth strategies. Agricultural and industrial complexes are a type of industrial complexes under the current legal system and are basically regulated by 「Industrial Sites And Development Act」 and 「Industrial Cluster Development And Factory Establishment Act」, but they are highly related to other laws such as 「Agricultural And Fishing Villages Improvement Act」 in that they are designated in rural areas. Because of this, unlike other industrial complexes, the authority system for the development and management of agricultural complexes is redundant and inefficient, as a result of such unsystematicity, integrated and systematic regulations on agricultural and industrial complexes are not implemented, resulting in the neglect of agricultural and industrial complexes outside the law. This situation also brings problems in relation to the form of regulations, and most of the specific regulations on the development and management of agricultural and industrial complexes are regulated not by laws, by the Unified Guidelines, which is an administrative rule jointly enacted by a number of ministries. However, in that many of the rules on agricultural and industrial complexes as industrial complexes are related to the rights and obligations of tenant companies and local governments, the rules of agricultural and industrial complexes under administrative rules are problematic in the principle of the rule of law. On the other hand, the legal system related to agricultural and industrial complexes is also not systematic because they are classified as a type of industrial complexes, but unlike conventional industrial complexes for national industrial development, they are also combined with the legal values of balanced national development or local autonomy. Therefore, the legal values and directions of balanced national development and local autonomy must be considered in the legislation of agricultural and industrial complexes, and this normative request is linked to the need to separate the legal system for agricultural and industrial complexes from those for ordinary industrial complexes. In order to improve these legal systems and legal forms, it is necessary to differentiate agricultural and industrial complexes from general industrial complexes to accept modern changes in the paradigm of realizing the legal value of balanced national development in addition to industrial functions. In such legislation, first of all, the legal value and direction of agricultural and industrial complexes should be clearly presented, as well as the significance of local autonomy laws of agricultural and industrial complexes. In addition, it is necessary to establish a management organization that can serve as a control ellipse so that it can exercise systematic and integrated management authority for the efficient operation of agricultural and industrial complexes. At the same time, the support system for agricultural and industrial complexes should be sought to legislate from the perspective of balanced national development beyond a simple industrial meaning.