Reversion of Collaborators’ Property to the State

Under a 2005 special act, a commission set up in July 2006 spent four years reverting to the state 2,359 parcels of land held by 168 collaborators.

In December 2005 a special act provided that property acquired as the price of pro-Japanese, anti-national acts between the Russo-Japanese War (1904) and liberation belongs to the state. In July 2006 a commission to investigate collaborators’ property was launched.

By July 2010 the commission had decided to revert to the state 2,359 parcels of land held by 168 collaborators (about 95.9 billion won at official land prices, about 210.6 billion won at market value). Descendants filed administrative suits, and in 2011 the Constitutional Court ruled the act constitutional. Because the law limited investigation to certain categories, however, only a little over half of those named by the truth commission were examined.

After the commission closed, reversion work all but stopped. In 2026 a new special act extending recovery to the proceeds of sales and offering rewards for reports was passed, to take effect that December.