일제의 한국토지정책과 ‘證明→地券→登記’로의 단계적 전환

일제강점기 한국의 토지정책과 증명·지권·등기제도의 단계적 전환을 연구했다.

Concerning the Imperial Japanese land politics in Korea, researchers have not paid attention to the introduction of land certificate system and its significance. The lack of materials may explain such a situation. But, more importantly, it is due to the fact that they approached the relation between the temporary attestation system during the Residency-General's regime and the registration system under the Imperial Japanese rule from the viewpoint of a break, rather than a continuation.

In this article I could, on the base of newly discovered materials, elucidate the processes concerning the appearance and disappearance of the land certificate system, which made possible to trace the gradual conversion of Attestation into Certificate and Registration. The attestation system, which was adopted by the Residency-General to assure the Japanese persons' land ownership and mortgage, came to be absorbed into the certificate system. And in May 1909, Land Readjustment Law was enacted requiring land survey to issue land certificates.

This law, by prescribing the land owner's declaration and spot presence, issue of land certificate, etc., became the model of the Land Survey Law(August, 1910). Thereafter the Torrens' System, which had been applied mainly to European colonies starting from Australia in 1858, was investigated to issue land certificate. But the Certificate System stopped to work by the Joseon Civil Act(March, 1912) which, invoking the Japanese Civil Law, prescribed the Registration System. Land law system in Korea under the Imperial Japanese rule was a result of duplication which was proceeded in certain time lag.

A series of Japanese land law system, that is the purchase attestation under the late shogunate, the land certificate of the early Meiji Reform period, registration in the Terrier(1889), registration of real estates by the Civil Law(1899) predetermined the course that Korean land law system was to follow right after the Residency-General's rule. Such an assimilation of law system led by the Imperial Japanese authorities much lessened the disparity in civilization level between Japan and Korea, but in fact it just meant the acceleration of the latter's colonization.