*4.4. Are There Land Transfer Rights (LTRs)?*

When selling, mortgaging, or conveying the land to others, it exhibits a considerable variation in transfer of land. However, what is actually transferred is not the land or building, but rather a bundle of rights pertaining to it [82], and this could be interpreted as land transfer rights (LTRs). A characteristic feature of when land or houses are being bought or sold is that the LTRs are accompanied by changes in the objects, which are not occurring in the neighboring objects. One can think of constructing a new roof, painting the house, construction of fences, construction of new objects or infrastructural works on the land. Moreover, the changes in structure, type and shape of the object are occurring in a relatively short time span. We would then assume that there might have been an LTR related to these objects.

According to [83], there is a tendency for households or farmers, those who suffered from tenure insecurity, to utilize tools of land conversion or reclamation as a way of building informal LTRs. In the same vein, in the mid-1990s, as a result of the massive food insecurity in the NK, unauthorized households reclaimed and cultivated vacant land as well as cleared the forests and occupied so-called 'small-land (sotoji)'. 'Sotoji' is located in the mountain slope and its transactions are being made publicly among the households. Three types of 'sotoji' existed: garden plot (GP); side-job plot (SJP); and tiny patch of land (TPL) [84]. In principle, the law prohibits the sale of land in NK. In reality, GP, having a large share to produce their foods, is explicitly recognized by the Constitution, the Civil Law and the Land Law (Article 13). GP was originally allowed to use in individual households within the collective farmlands and it was common to situate at the front yard of houses or on an empty space between them. The size of GP is approximately 66 to 100 m2, but, in fact, it covers about 100 to 165 m2. In addition, if the house is sparse and the vacant land is immense in size, it is reported that an even larger-sized GP is allowed. Likewise, since the mid-1990s, the GP was built in a vacant land attached to a detached house or a balcony of an apartment in urban areas.

SJP was developed from the early 1980s to cultivate the barren land, which has not cultivated by the farmers of collective farmlands. If the GP is individual farming units, the SJP is a group units (cf. the scale is approximately 3000 to 6600 m2). Unlike the SJP, TPL is illegally cultivated private land. This originally refers to a small-scale farmland rather than linking the subject or illegality of cultivation. TPL is deemed an object of their own since households put considerable effort into cultivation. The authorities, however, investigate the TPL and impose land use fees to place it under the State control. In this process, land transaction has actually occurred and there are also certain cases where it is handed over to the neighboring landowner, or it is exchanged with other corresponding goods or cash. Although it is different from SK's land transaction that transfers ownership through such transaction processes, it can be assumed that land transaction of TPL would inevitably occur.

Figure 8 reveals that (a) describes the major feature of TPL located in the mountain slope with the evidence of forest farming. TPL may be located in a relatively lower elevation and land parcels where slopes have gentle or stable slopes. As the population grows in areas where arable land is scarce, people tend to take advantage of reclaiming land in fallow on the terraced hillsides that are easily accessible. Therefore, the proxies for TPL include: lower elevation using a digital elevation model (DEM) and slopes have a gradient less than 15%. With HRSI, the small patches of vegetation cover between neighboring lands on the mountain can be considered as a proxy to detect and identify TPL. Meanwhile, (b) illustrates GP where individual households officially are allowed to cultivate and produce SJP in their front yard or at the rear of a house. Other indicators of SJP in the cooperative farmlands where a group of farmers can cultivate the barren land are the length or width of image features (small parcel size for GP and large parcel size for SJP), location-specific features (front/back yard or attached to each other), and natural colors of features (GP and SJP are often depicted in green on the imagery). In addition, (c) is an exemplary attribute of TPL where individual households cultivate vacant lands

along the streams, so adjacency to the streams or ditches and the small and regular/irregular patches of vegetation cover along the streams or ditches can be interpreted as transferrable and applicable proxies.

To sum, the authorities in NK drag 'sotoji' within the public land management sphere to restrict (illegal) land use. On the other hand, households generate more income out of the management area with the sense of personal land tenure. Therefore, 'sotoji' can be important proxies that prove the existence of LTRs with some of the aforementioned elements of image interpretation.

#### *4.5. Are There a Land Access Rights (LARs) and Restrictions?*

What is known about LARs is largely derived from a private land tenure system that gives priority to the rights of individuals. The main segment of LARs frequently addressed are: an easement (servitude) and rights of way. A characteristic of LARs is that multiple objects are connected to single or multiple types of objects. An easement generally places an emphasis on allowing for separate usage of land which could refer to the right to use another household's land for different purposes. There may be varying activities over the single parcel of land or an entire property over the land that represents LARs. For instance, one of the best known is installing public utilities into a certain land parcels [85]. Another major illustration is reaching inaccessible properties or linking two separated objects through road-related infrastructure.

Turning now to the LARs in the given context of this paper, it is important to bear in mind that we may accompany a possible bias in describing unknown land tenure relations since private land tenure is not recognized in NK and there is no land use regulation through the restriction of private rights. Although all land belongs to the State, we assume that both the State and collectives can restrict the use by restricting access for public purpose. We thus, for the purpose of analysis, assume that the State, collectives and the households in NK may acknowledge LARs.

If our assumptions are to be accepted, they enable us to provide a number of available proxies (see Figure 9). We also need to derive whether the object under consideration is connected to any form of infrastructure or not, as well as if other objects (such as silos) are connected to infrastructure. In this regard, identifying several utility networks offer an effective way of confirming the presence of LARs in NK. Moreover, when newly creating a parcel (called "division") and two or more parcels of land from the existing one (called "subdivision") for the commercial or residential purpose, these properties commonly generate different types of easements under certain physical characteristics of the objects. Therefore, the subdivision of land parcels or (in)consistent land use may implicate whether LARs exist or not.

As shown in Figure 9, we were able to detect and label what objects are especially linked to the public rights of way and servitude (focusing on restrictions on the use of land) rather than individual rights of way. These include: solar panels, railroads, drinking water production facilities, a transmission tower, pipelines, footpaths, military site, and reservoir. We noted that there are some site characteristics near public utility networks, nature reserves, and a public heritage site. However, defining which proxies are workable for LARs is highly context-dependent due to the lack of formalized and proven rules as well as its application in different contexts. It also requires forming an ensemble with other types of proxies to describe the socio-legal status of the objects. Among the elements of image interpretation, only site or situation elements are valid and reliable in detecting the public rights of way. We then produced only few proxies by deriving similar site and situational features from nine images as follows: proximity to hazardous or isolated locations, poor accessibility (lack of access roads), elongated object shapes, and less green and open spaces.

**Figure 9.** Multiple examples of urban structures on certain land parcels: (**a**) solar panels (in Kumsanpho solar power station), (**b**) railroads (in Rajin), (**c**) drinking water production facilities (in Kaesong), (**d**) a transmission tower (in Electric power transmission office in Sepho), (**e**) pipelines (in Seungri chemical complex refinery in Rason), (**f**) footpaths (in Pyeongyang), (**g**) public heritage (in Hyesan), (**h**) military site (in Pukchang), (**i**) reservoir (in Ryongrim) (image sources: Google Earth, date of access: 17 October 2019).
