Gangwon Province failing to use hard-won regulatory powers, lawmaker says

Gangwon Special Self-Governing Province has largely failed to use the hard-won regulatory exemption powers it secured to designate rural vitality promotion zones and forest use promotion zones, according to a provincial assembly lawmaker.

Lawmaker Kang Jeong-ho of the Gangwon Special Self-Governing Provincial Assembly said Saturday that an analysis of data obtained from the province's agriculture and forestry departments showed that the total area designated as rural vitality promotion zones from 2024 to 2026 amounted to just 4.4 percent of the province's full designation authority of 4,000 hectares. Over the same period, only two forest use promotion zones had been designated.

A significant portion of Gangwon Province's farmland has long been locked up as protected agricultural zones, severely restricting local development and private investment. The province's vast forests — covering more than 80 percent of its total area — have been equally off-limits, hemmed in by a web of laws including the Mountainous Districts Management Act, the Forest Protection Act and the Baekdudaegan Protection Act.

Through persistent efforts by residents, amendments to the Gangwon Special Act eventually granted the provincial governor the authority to designate rural vitality promotion zones, lift protected agricultural zone designations, and — for the first time anywhere in the country — designate forest use promotion zones. In practice, however, those transferred powers have gone almost entirely unused, Kang said.

"Contrary to the original vision of creating new growth hubs in rural areas through rural vitality promotion zone designations, only about 1.65 million square meters — just 4.4 percent of the total designation authority — was designated over the past three years," Kang said. "And contrary to the ambition of building a Korean-style Alps, only two forest use promotion zones were designated over the same period."

He said a passive approach — waiting for applications from individual cities and counties and simply reviewing them at the provincial level — would never fulfill the intent of the special exemptions. "There is an urgent need for a policy that proactively identifies the tourism, cultural and geographic characteristics of each city and county and drives zone designations forward," he said.