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.

This study aims to show how the urbanization of Korea has progressed for the last three decades, what its characteristics are, and how rural land use has changed by the national and district(cities and counties) level. The land use changes accompanying to the urbanization is analyzed through 3 indicators such as urbanization rate, the rate of cultivated and forest land and the rate of urbanized area. The statistical data are 30 years from 1976 to 2005 for time series analysis by the national level, and are for the two years of 1995 and 2005 by the district level. The relationship between urbanization and land use changes in the national level is analyzed using statistical analysis(Correlation Analysis). In order to analyze the dynamic and spatial urbanization and land use changes effectively in the district level, Z-score, Paired T-test, Correlation Analysis, Analysis of Variance and Chi-squire Test are used. The results show negative correlation between urbanization rate and the rate of cultivated and forest land, and positive correlation between urbanization rate and the rate of urbanized area respectively. In the aspect of the change of urbanization rate, four categories are examined. In addition, four types are characterized on the basis of the rate of cultivated and forest land and the rate of urbanized area between 1995 from 2005.

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.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of land-use and population change in rural area by new expressway. Chungbu expressway constructed in 1987, going through the south area of Kyunggi province from Seoul, was selected as a case expressway, and also 2 cities and 18 subdivisions of county in its surrounding area, as a case study area. To analyze the change characteristics before and after the construction, land-use maps of 1986 and 1996 were collected, including the census data for the years in cities and counties yearbooks. Remote sensing technology was applied to classify the land-use maps with six types of land use. Geographic information system was also used for spatial analysis, such as the land-use and accessibility changes. A 5 km buffer zone from interchange of the expressway showed about two times increase of urbanized built-up area than a 5 km buffer zone from the expressway. Accessibility from Seoul and cities was improved in most areas, which is accessing to Seoul through existing Youngdong expressway. Ten rural areas showed increased population with accessibility of average 52 minutes to Seoul and 19 minutes to cities, while eight areas showed decreased population with average 73 minutes to Seoul and 35 minutes to cities. This shows that the threshold value, which is time distance to Seoul and cities for population increase or decrease, one and half hours, respectively. Urbanized area was increased in most areas, even in population decrease areas, so this indicates that there are thinning rural areas, increasing urbanized area while decreasing population.

The purpose of this study was to propose section designs for the ecological improvement of streams in rural villages in Korea. According to the survey about ecological conditions of rural streams of 10 selected rural villages (sep., 1996), the streams could be classified into three divisions(upstream, inner village, downstream), and the average width of streams was 9m, and the height of banks 3.1m. The slopes of basin were 7.33%, 2.67%, 1.39% at upstream, inner village, downstream respectively. The survey about the residents' usage of stream and the preferred activities(jun., 1997) showed that the streams were most frequently used for the supply of agricultural water use(39%), for the washing(15%) and for the recreation and rippling(10%), etc.. Three standard designs were presented for upstream, inner village, and downstream, and three standard sections were made by each designs. For the upstream division, it was designed to be used for the recreational activities in summer and the major stream bank materials were base rock and existing boulders with least artificiality. As the streams in the residential area were expected to be frequent access and used by the residents, most facilities for the streamside activity such as waterfront, water holes, shallows, walk were concentrated in this part with some artificiality. The downstream was designed for the agricultural activities such as water supply, space for the preparation of work and some break during the work.

For formulation of the rational land us2 plan in regional base, it is a basic and prior condition to categorize total planning area into some functional subregions by purposely-selected indicators. As one of quantitive approaches to the areal categorization in rural area, Principal Component Analysis(PCA) was introduced and testified its applicability through a case study on Sunheungdistrict(called as myun in Korea) area, Youngpoong-county, Kyungbuk-province, Korea. Areal analysis by PCA was carried out on rurality and urbanity of parish-level area(ri in Korea) respectively. By use of PCA analysis results, classifying matrix was made through categorization of both index scores. Among 18 ri's of the case study area, 12 was classified as rural-dominated areas, 2 as urban- dominated areas, and reamaining 3 as intermediate areas.