한말 일제의 산림조사와 삼림법 성격

The Forest Survey and the Enactment of Forest Act by Imperial Japan in the Late Korean Empire

This study aims to examine the characters of the forest act(森林法) which enacted before the Japanese occupation. The forest act was made on the basis of the forest and state-owned woodland laws of Japan. It was enforced in three directions. First, by proclaiming the nationalization of ownerless mountains, the state-owned forests was used. In the eyes of the Japanese, the ‘modern’ ownership of forests was not yet built in Joseon. Therefore, it was necessary to turn an ownerless mountain into a state-owned one in a exclusive ownership officially in order to manage it. Accordingly, Imperial Japan could establish the management and disposition of those secured state-owned forests. Second, the system of profit sharing forests was introduced. It was intended to foster the national forest and make profits, attracting private capital. But its outcome was low, for its investment value had fallen in that any ownership couldn’t be acquired finally. This affected the introduction of a lease for planting in 1911. As the effectiveness of shared forests was on the downward path, Imperial Japan sought to lend a forest in the name of afforestation and transfer the ‘ownership’ in accordance with his own certain standards. Third, the declaration of a forest under private ownership was obligated. Imperial Japan had taken note of the thought of the royal domain in his forest survey, but he couldn’t deny the private ownerships entirely. And he arranged the reported clause not to aim at the ownership survey of the individual private forests, but to minimize the frictions between forests. The declaration, in the forest act, had the proclamatory meaning to carry out the national policy of forest efficiently, by classifying a declared forest as a private one and considering a undeclared as ‘state-owned.’