This article centers on ‘rural landscape’ in terms of subjects and subject-words among journals that are registered or would be registered in Korea Education and Research Information Service from 1995 up to 2014 to group 109 theses by subject that include planning, projects, residents’ participation, that are fit for the purpose of this study so that research trends by journal, change in subjects by year and change in detailed subjects may be analyzed. Its detailed outcome is as follows. First, current situations of carrying theses by academic society shows that a total of 23 societies have conducted research, among which, International Society for Rural Plan In Korea has contributed 57 theses followed by Korean Science of Landscape Architecture with 10 theses and Korean Rural Society with 8 theses. Among them, Korean Rural Society is the only one continually contributing theses up until now, positioning itself at the center of rural landscape research. Second, a look into years shows that there was meager researches made; 6 from 1995 ~ 1999, 9 from 2000 to 2004 while there was a leap up to 55 from 2005 to 2009. There was a decrease down to 39 theses from 2010 to 2014 but research activities went on.

The purpose of this study is to propose the rural landscape planning criteria for Korean rural area. For this, the meaning of rural landscape is defined, and the legislative framework and several legal processes are surveyed, including the deliberation system for natural landscape impacts and the Landscape Law recently legislated. Through literature studies and analysis, the rural landscape planning criteria are proposed, which have step-by-step processes; goals and objectives, analysis and estimation for present conditions, basic planning concept, landscape planning for different visual landscape types, landscape designing for visual elements, and practical action plans. Each processes are designed considering the existing legislative framework, so it can be well-matched to current systems. But, because there are few rural landscape plans so far, comparing to the urban landscape plans, the validity of this criteria should be verified in the future studies.