The scale of unsold business land held by the Korea Land and Housing Corporation (LH) that has not been sold to the private sector has increased by about 2.5 times in four years.

According to data submitted by LH to Representative Jung Il-young of the Democratic Party of Korea, a member of the National Assembly's Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee, on the 3rd, the unsold land held by LH as of July this year reached 21.8892 trillion won based on supply prices. This is a 2.5-fold increase from 8.7074 trillion won in 2022.

The number of lots also increased about 2.6 times over the same period, from 2,340 lots to 6,189 lots.

Among the unsold land, properties that have remained unsold for 15 years or longer were tallied at 23 lots (amounting to 775.2 billion won based on supply price).

The oldest case is the Pyeongtaek Cheongbuk General Commercial Land, which has failed to find an owner for 19 years as of July this year, despite supply notices being issued 12 times since it was first offered in May 2007.

There are also lands that have not been sold for a long time even after sales conditions were significantly relaxed. The Goyang Samsong General Hospital site has not been sold to date despite 12 supply notices since it was first offered in 2009.

Although the land is currently in a usable state and benefits such as 5-year interest-free installment payments, deferred payment structures, and land return systems are being applied, it is still unable to find a buyer.

Nevertheless, Representative Jung pointed out that LH is currently pushing to newly acquire 500 billion won worth of supply-adjusting reserve land capable of housing apartment construction in the metropolitan area.

Representative Jung stated, "The fact that some of the already supplied land has remained unsold for nearly 10 or 20 years means we need to look back and assess whether our judgment on land demand and utilization potential was appropriate," adding, "We must inspect overall land management from acquisition to supply so that public funds do not repeatedly get tied up in lands that have gone unutilized for long periods."

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