Three days of shame: How the Finance Ministry and Kamco fumbled a national landmark

A banner hung — then swiftly cut down

Aerial maps show the sea itself listed as Finance Ministry property

Illegal parking, unlicensed structures, and no permanent barriers — temporary cones can simply be pulled out

Word has long circulated in Sokcho that one person a year falls to their death in the rocks off Yeonggeum-jeong

Kamco's banner hung before the holiday weekend (left) and the same spot on Monday, after the banner was cut down and removed. The Yeonggeum-jeong pavilion is visible in the distance. [Park Jeong-gyu]

President Lee Jae Myung, during his years as Seongnam mayor and Gyeonggi Province governor, repeatedly said: "The country doesn't lack money — it has too many thieves." These days, that line might just as well read: "The country doesn't lack state-owned land — it has too many incompetent civil servants."

Just before the holiday weekend, a large banner appeared at the rocky entrance to Yeonggeum-jeong in Sokcho, Gangwon Province — one of the country's most popular tourist destinations, drawing thousands of visitors every weekend. The banner, put up by the Korea Asset Management Corporation (Kamco), which manages Finance Ministry property, blocked the entrance entirely. It read: "This is precious national property — state-owned land. Unauthorized occupation is strictly prohibited. Violators will face forced removal and penalty charges."

The moment the banner went up, the establishments that had profited illegally from the site for decades — two or three businesses nearby — were thrown into an uproar. The land belongs to the Finance Ministry, and this reporter has written multiple times calling on the ministry to manage it properly. Arriving at the scene after receiving a tip, the reporter read the banner carefully. The word "safety" does not appear anywhere on it.

Land registry documents and cadastral maps tell a strange story. The boundary lines drawn for the parcel include the sea. All the rocks to the left of the Yeonggeum-jeong pavilion are listed as Finance Ministry property. The lot — registered as Dongmyeong-dong 1-3 in Sokcho, measuring 6,989 square meters — has its boundary drawn to encompass open water. Most startling of all: the land category is listed as "forest." A boundary that takes in the sea, classified as forest land — it is enough to make anyone laugh bitterly at the absurdity.

Sokcho city officials said that if anyone wanted to build on or sell the parcel, the sea portion would first have to be excised, since open water is classified as shared public surface. But Yeonggeum-jeong and the surrounding area have been an established tourist destination for decades, and the site turns dangerous when typhoons strike. Seawater regularly surges to head height, flooding not just the rocks but deep into Dongmyeong-dong, triggering repeated evacuation scrambles — so frequently that the city has installed loudspeakers to broadcast evacuation orders. Against that backdrop — a sea-swallowing parcel classified as forest, a tourist site of decades' standing, a place where evacuation orders are routine — it is hard to understand why Kamco chose to hang a banner. Land registry records show the parcel was registered as Finance Ministry state land on July 22, 2008. The ministry went nearly 20 years without a single act of management, only to finally act through Kamco and a banner. Kamco has the authority to post such notices on government property, but many observers say it showed no grasp of the reality on the ground.

The Finance Ministry-owned Yeonggeum-jeong site — a tourist area that includes open water — alongside its cadastral map and land registry record. The sea falls within the black boundary line. [Park Jeong-gyu]

The banner had been up for three days before the holiday when it was cut down on Monday, the first day of the long weekend. Not a trace remained. A search of nearby trash cans turned up nothing. Only a few strands of rope, sliced clean, skittered across the ground in the wind. It was not hard to guess who did it. For decades, businesses at the site have put up unlicensed structures along the road-facing side of Yeonggeum-jeong, run illegal valet parking operations, set up overnight car-camping spots, and sunk iron posts into the ground to sell coffee. It is a landscape of disorder and unchecked illegality. Sokcho city says its hands are tied because the land belongs to the Finance Ministry.

State-owned land is not a private resource for one or two people to monopolize. It is government property, plain and simple. Yet the belief that land behind one's home is effectively one's own has been lodged in the public mind for a very long time.

As Gyeonggi Province governor, President Lee cracked down hard on illegal valley-side businesses in northern Gyeonggi Province, winning wide public support. The Yeonggeum-jeong area has its own record of disaster: a typhoon some years ago sent a wall of seawater surging over the Finance Ministry's rocky land and inundating the surrounding area. Parked compact cars were seen floating away; seawater pushed deep into Dongmyeong-dong, setting off repeated evacuation scrambles. Traced to its source, each of those disasters began with seawater crossing Finance Ministry land — a failure of management and a dangerous indifference to safety. Not long ago, two tourists swept away while watching a typhoon had to be rescued. In Sokcho, the rumor that one person a year drowns in the waters off Yeonggeum-jeong has circulated for years. Last year, one person did in fact die near the site.

The banner was still in place at 8 p.m. When the reporter returned in the early hours, it had been cut away overnight without a trace. As the holiday got underway, hundreds to thousands of visitors came to see the rocks at Yeonggeum-jeong. None of them knew a banner had ever been there, and none knew the land belonged to the Finance Ministry. To them, it is simply a tourist spot. The Kamco banner did not even specify which portion of the land was Finance Ministry property.

The fix is straightforward: install permanent barriers or fixed steel posts to stop illegal parking, and demolish the unlicensed structures. More important than any of that, however, is safety. Primary responsibility for safety lies with Sokcho city, but the Finance Ministry, as the landowner, cannot escape its share of accountability. The assumption that a single banner would resolve everything has ended in humiliation for both the Finance Ministry and Kamco.

Tourists enjoy the rocks at Yeonggeum-jeong during the holiday weekend, unaware the land belongs to the Finance Ministry. [Park Jeong-gyu]

fob140@heraldcorp.com