Legal Review for Job Creation to Address Regional Extinction: Focusing on Policies for Activating Corporate Relocation

This study aims to conduct an in-depth review of the legal and institutional framework supporting corporate relocation policies as a key strategy to address the urgent issue of regional extinction and sustainable development in South Korea. Rapid population decline and the concentration of young populations in the metropolitan area have placed many local small and medium- sized cities at risk of disappearance, causing complex problems such as economic collapse, deterioration of public services, and declining quality of life for residents. Stable and quality job creation in local areas is essential to mitigate these issues, with corporate relocation emerging as a pivotal means. However, current legal systems are limited in effectively promoting corporate relocation due to dispersed authority between central and local governments, lack of inter-agency cooperation, discretionary operation of corporate incentives, and insufficient legal enforceability. This study analyzes these problems in detail, focusing on the lack of administrative coordination caused by authority fragmentation, uncertainty in incentive systems, and the legal ambiguity in unregulated competition among local governments. Furthermore, it proposes specific and practical legal and administrative reforms, including mandatory establishment of statutory corporate relocation plans, systematization and guaranteed application rights for tax incentives, introduction of public-private cooperation models linking local public institutions, and the legal institutionalization of corporate attraction contracts along with remedial procedures for contract breaches. These reforms are expected to enhance policy consistency, administrative trust, and predictability, thereby strengthening mutual confidence between local governments and corporations and significantly contributing to regional economic revitalization and the prevention of population extinction.