About 20 people filled the courtroom, but bidding was sparse. The scene looked less like an auction than a wait for any buyer to appear. Of the 34 rice paddies, fields and orchards put up for sale that day, only four drew bids — and three of those had a single bidder each. The contrast was stark with a single apartment in neighboring Okcheon County, which attracted 12 bidders. A field in Eochon-ri, Maegok-myeon, Yeongdong County finally found a top bidder that day at just 22% of its appraised value after seven failed auctions.
Local residents at the court lamented that land had become "dirt cheap." One resident, identified as A, said: "Out in the countryside, you can't find anyone even if you offer them land to farm. Holding onto land is pointless because it won't sell anyway." Another Yeongdong resident in his 70s said: "When I was young, the joy of life was working hard to acquire land. Now it's a burden. Even people who used to buy land in advance, planning to return to farming after retirement, are hard to find these days."
The farmland auction market is losing not just value but its very function as a marketplace. Demand has vanished to the point that buyers fail to appear even after repeated failed auctions drive minimum prices down to about 20% of appraised value. With the government's full-scale farmland audit now compounding an already depressed market, concerns are mounting that regulatory burdens and policy uncertainty could further choke transactions.
The slump shows up in rock-bottom winning bids nationwide. According to Jijiauction, the sale-to-appraisal ratio for all farmland sold at auction through Oct. 19 this year was 43.8%, below half of appraised value. In other words, properties are finding buyers only after multiple failed auctions reduce them to bargain prices — or failing to sell no matter how far prices fall.
The concern is that the slump could also hamper debt recovery in the financial sector. When farmland pledged as collateral repeatedly fails to sell, disposal is delayed, and even when a sale finally goes through, recovery amounts are increasingly likely to fall short of expectations. A prolonged auction slump could translate into loss risks for financial institutions, observers warn.
Farm households' access to funding is also at risk. Farmland serves both as a means of production and as a key asset for raising living expenses and farming capital. If falling farmland prices erode collateral value, lending hurdles rise, making it harder for farmers to buy machinery or invest in facilities. That, in turn, further weakens their capacity to purchase farmland, deepening the market slump in a vicious cycle.
Experts say the audit in particular could freeze farmland buying sentiment that is already structurally depressed. Fears of heavier regulatory burdens after acquisition — and of further price declines as a result — could suppress demand.
Lim Jung-bin, a professor of agricultural economics and rural sociology at Seoul National University, said: "Even people who intended to buy farmland now worry they could be branded illegal speculators or targeted by regulation if they buy the wrong plot. After the audit, the transaction market cooled even further." Resident A in Yeongdong added: "I'm too old to farm and the land won't sell. Now I wonder whether even leasing it out will become difficult."
Some argue policy should shift away from cracking down on speculation toward smoothly supplying farmland to actual cultivators. Kim Hong-sang, chairman of the Agricultural Policy Research Center, said: "To preserve farmland for future generations and use it efficiently, accurate data must come first. The government should strictly manage some speculative farmland acquisitions while clearly laying out medium- to long-term principles for farmland preservation and rational use."
Lim said: "Preserving and utilizing prime farmland requires a cross-ministry plan that also covers inheritance and capital gains taxation. Speculative demand should be curbed, but conditions must be created so that new farmers, including young ones, can secure land at reasonable prices."