In 2003, "The National Land Use and Planning Act" (NLUP Act) was enacted unifying two old laws; "The Urban Planning Act" enacted in 1962 and "The National Land Use and Management Act" enacted in 1972. One of main reasons of unifying two acts was to extend urban planning-based development systems to rural areas for preventing uncontrolled urban sprawl in rural areas and enhancing or settlling plan-based land use system in rural areas. This paper is conducted with the following specific objectives: i) to critically review the contents of NLUP Act in terms of rational rural land use planning; ii) to evaluate plan-based land use practices in rural area by NLUP Act; iii) to appraise performance level for prevention against unplanned development activities in rural areas by NLUP Act. To accomplish these objectives, we surveyed actural state of rural land use and development system by the new act in two case study areas. Ansung city in Gyeongi province as an urban sprawl region and Hamyang county in Gyeongnam Province as a remote rural area. Study results ascertained that the new act can not effectively control rural land use and not prevent over-use of agricultural land in the positive and effective ways because of followering three points.

Through the fast economic growth since the 1960s, Korea has experienced various problems on land such as urban sprawl, the rapid increase in land prices, land speculation, privatization of the betterment, and so on. To prevent such problems and to enhance harmonious development and conservation, the National Land Planning and Use Act(NLPUA) was established in 2003. The NLPUA which was revised and combined two existing planning laws i.e. the National Land Use Management Act and Urban Planning Act, has an eye to preventing disorderly spatial development, to pursuing environmentally friendly spatial planning, and to following up planned development in non-urbanized area like rural area. This study aims to discuss what should be considered the pending issues after the application of the NLPUA in rural area. On the basis of reviewing the NLPUA in a viewpoint of the rural planning, this study suggests some improvement policy such as considering various rural conditions, securing excellent agricultural land, applying the District Plan II system effectively, reorganizing the planning administrative, and so on.