Open Decision Ledger · Constitutional, administrative & state liability
Refusing a crematorium plan proposal within the authority's forming discretion
Supreme Court, Sept. 3, 2020, 2020Du34346 (judgment)
No holding summary · checked against points at issue. The official text publishes no summary of the holding for this decision. The quotation and factors in this record are copied verbatim from the points at issue; the evidence for each axis is taken from the points at issue, the order and the reasons.
Case name: 군관리계획입안제안신청반려처분취소
Official text on the National Law Information Center
Question
When a developer proposes a change to the city or county management plan so that a crematorium may be installed as an urban and county planning facility in preservation and plan management areas, and the planning authority refuses the proposal for fear that the nearby residential environment would worsen, does the refusal abuse the discretion to form the plan, bearing in mind Article 8(1) of the Rules on the Decision, Structure and Installation Standards of Urban and Rural Planning Facilities, which calls for minimising damage to the environment?
Holding
The authority's discretion is wide, but not unlimited. It is unlawful where the authority weighed the competing public and private interests not at all, left out a matter that had to be included in that weighing, or weighed but lacked legitimacy and objectivity. On conditions of a development project that require prediction of uncertain future circumstances and their ripple effects, the authority's discretionary judgment is widely respected unless it is manifestly irrational or plainly at odds with equity and proportionality, and an appraisal opinion differing in part from the authority's own prediction does not by itself make that judgment unlawful. Here the land was designated as preservation and plan management area, with no special circumstance showing the forest and green space had been damaged beyond repair, and adding a crematorium to a memorial park already holding a funeral hall, graves and a columbarium could not be said to have only a small cumulative impact, so it is difficult to conclude that the refusal lacked legitimacy and objectivity.
Points at issue, verbatim
행정주체가 행정계획을 입안·결정할 때 이익형량을 전혀 하지 않거나 이익형량의 고려 대상에 마땅히 포함시켜야 할 사항을 누락한 경우 또는 이익형량을 하였으나 정당성과 객관성이 결여된 경우, 행정계획 결정이 위법한지 여부(적극)
Unofficial English translation
Where an administrative body, in formulating and deciding an administrative plan, has failed to balance interests at all, or has omitted matters that should properly have been included among the factors for that balancing of interests, or has balanced interests but in a manner lacking justification and objectivity, whether an administrative plan decision is unlawful (affirmative)
Disposition
Reversed and remanded Stated in the decision
원심판결을 파기하고, 사건을 수원고등법원에 환송한다.
Unofficial English translation
The judgment of the court below is reversed, and the case is remanded to the Suwon High Court.
Form of the test
Elements stated Stated in the decision
행정주체가 행정계획을 입안·결정할 때 이러한 이익형량을 전혀 하지 않거나 이익형량의 고려 대상에 마땅히 포함시켜야 할 사항을 누락한 경우, 또는 이익형량을 하였으나 정당성과 객관성이 결여된 경우에는 재량권을 일탈·남용한 것으로 위법하다고 보아야 한다(대법원 2007. 4. 12. 선고 2005두1893 판결 등 참조).
Unofficial English translation
Where an administrative body, in formulating and deciding an administrative plan, has failed to balance interests at all, or has omitted matters that should properly have been included among the factors for that balancing of interests, or has balanced interests but in a manner lacking justification and objectivity, it must be regarded as unlawful as having exceeded or abused its discretion (see, inter alia, Supreme Court Decision 2005Du1893 decided April 12, 2007).
Factors
- 행정주체가 구체적인 행정계획을 입안·결정할 때 가지는 형성의 자유의 한계
- 이익형량을 전혀 하지 않거나 이익형량의 고려 대상에 마땅히 포함시켜야 할 사항을 누락한 경우
- 이익형량을 하였으나 정당성과 객관성이 결여된 경우
- 장래에 발생할 불확실한 상황과 파급효과에 대한 예측이 필요한 요건에 관한 행정청의 재량적 판단은 폭넓게 존중되어야 하는지 여부(원칙적 적극)
- 이 경우 행정청의 당초 예측이나 평가와 일부 다른 내용의 감정의견이 제시되었다는 사정만으로 행정청의 판단을 위법하다고 할 수 있는지 여부(소극)
Unofficial English translation
• The limits of the freedom of formation that an administrative body has when it formulates and decides a specific administrative plan
• Where the balancing of interests has been omitted entirely, or matters that should properly have been included among the factors for that balancing of interests have been omitted
• Where interests have been balanced but the balancing lacks justification and objectivity
• Whether the discretionary judgment of an administrative agency on requirements that call for prediction of uncertain circumstances and ripple effects that will arise in the future must be respected to a broad extent (affirmative in principle)
• Whether, in such a case, the agency's judgment can be held unlawful merely because an expert opinion has been presented containing some content different from the agency's original prediction or assessment (negative)
Relation to precedent
Follows earlier decisions Stated in the decision
대법원 2007. 4. 12. 선고 2005두1893 판결(공2007상, 711)
Unofficial English translation
Supreme Court Decision 2005Du1893 decided April 12, 2007 (Gong 2007 Sang, 711)
Decisions referred to
[1] 대법원 2007. 4. 12. 선고 2005두1893 판결(공2007상, 711), 대법원 2018. 10. 12. 선고 2015두50382 판결, 대법원 2020. 6. 25. 선고 2019두56135 판결 / [2] 대법원 2017. 3. 15. 선고 2016두55490 판결(공2017상, 778), 대법원 2018. 4. 12. 선고 2017두71789 판결, 대법원 2020. 7. 23. 선고 2020두36007 판결(공2020하, 1719)
Burden of proof
Not addressed Not in the decision
Open question and revisit condition
How different must an appraisal opinion be from the authority's own prediction before that prediction is manifestly unreasonable?
The retrial judgment of the Suwon High Court on remand, once it weighs the public interest need for the crematorium against the cumulative impact, would show how this weighing works in practice. A change to Article 36(1) of the National Land Planning and Utilisation Act or to Article 8(1) of the Rules on the Decision, Structure and Installation Standards of Urban and Rural Planning Facilities, or a later decision varying the respect owed to a planning authority's prediction, would call for this entry to be read again.
Cross-family AI independent reading & axis check
7 of 8 axes matched GPT-6 Astra (OpenAI, codex CLI) · 2026-10-26
A reader from another model family (GPT-6 Astra), given the official text but not the primary reading, agreed on 7 of the 8 axes; the readings differed on axis 4 (form of the test).
Axis 4 (Form of the test): Primary “Elements stated” vs Independent “Circumstances weighed”
The source states both a general balancing test and a deferential prediction review so the primary reads it as stating requirements while the independent reads it as overall consideration.
이익형량의 고려 대상에 마땅히 포함시켜야 할 사항을 누락한 경우 또는 이익형량을 하였으나 정당성과 객관성이 결여된 경우Raw responses and comparison record: Protocol · Blind readings (JSONL) · Axis comparison (JSONL) · SHA-256 (JSON)
Lower-court contrast & scope of application
Lower-court reading vs. Supreme Court holding
Lower-court context: The Suwon High Court, in its judgment of 22 January 2020 (2019Nu12056), accepted the plaintiff's claim to set aside the refusal. On the circumstances it stated, including the public interest need for installing a crematorium, it held that the defendant's refusal of the proposal to change the management plan involved abuse of discretion in forming the plan. The official text does not set out those circumstances one by one.
Supreme Court standard: The Supreme Court held that the court below had misapprehended the legal principles on administrative plans and on the criteria for abuse of discretion and had failed to conduct the necessary review. The land was designated as preservation and plan management area, so the authority's refusal was widely respected absent a special circumstance of irreversible damage, and the cumulative impact of adding a crematorium to the existing memorial park could not be called small; the judgment was reversed and the case remanded to the Suwon High Court for retrial, by the unanimous opinion of the Justices.
Distinguishing conditions
- A site where a special circumstance shows that forest and green space have been damaged beyond repair, so that the need to keep the existing planning restriction is hard to uphold.
- A project whose added impact on the surrounding living environment, taken together with the existing state, is small enough to be called so.
- A refusal where the authority weighed no public or private interest at all, or omitted a matter that had to be included in that weighing.
Record verification notes
Set the designation of each parcel under Article 36(1) of the National Land Planning and Utilisation Act against any special circumstance of damage, since the Court rested its view of the need for preservation on that designation. Then gather what the existing memorial park already puts on the surrounding area, together with the distances to the soldiers' apartments and the village hall, to test the cumulative impact. Finally, put the appraisal opinions on file beside the authority's own prediction and ask whether they make the judgment manifestly unreasonable rather than merely different.
From the official text
Points at issue
[1] 행정계획의 의미 및 행정주체가 구체적인 행정계획을 입안·결정할 때 가지는 형성의 자유의 한계 / 행정주체가 행정계획을 입안·결정할 때 이익형량을 전혀 하지 않거나 이익형량의 고려 대상에 마땅히 포함시켜야 할 사항을 누락한 경우 또는 이익형량을 하였으나 정당성과 객관성이 결여된 경우, 행정계획 결정이 위법한지 여부(적극) [2] 어떤 개발사업이 ‘자연환경·생활환경에 미치는 영향’과 같이 장래에 발생할 불확실한 상황과 파급효과에 대한 예측이 필요한 요건에 관한 행정청의 재량적 판단은 폭넓게 존중되어야 하는지 여부(원칙적 적극) 및 이 경우 행정청의 당초 예측이나 평가와 일부 다른 내용의 감정의견이 제시되었다는 사정만으로 행정청의 판단을 위법하다고 할 수 있는지 여부(소극) / 이때 개발사업의 적합 여부 판단과 관련한 행정청의 재량권 일탈·남용 여부를 심사하는 방법과 대상
Unofficial English translation
[1] Meaning of an administrative plan and the limits of the freedom of formation that an administrative body has when it formulates and decides a specific administrative plan / Whether an administrative plan decision is unlawful (affirmative) where an administrative body, in formulating and deciding an administrative plan, has failed to balance interests at all, or has omitted matters that should properly have been included among the factors for that balancing of interests, or has balanced interests but in a manner lacking justification and objectivity [2] Whether the discretionary judgment of an administrative agency on requirements that call for prediction of uncertain circumstances and ripple effects that will arise in the future, such as the 'impact on the natural and living environment' of a development project, must be respected to a broad extent (affirmative in principle) and whether, in such a case, the agency's judgment can be held unlawful merely because an expert opinion has been presented containing some content different from the agency's original prediction or assessment (negative) / In that case, the method and object of review as to whether the administrative agency has exceeded or abused its discretion in determining the suitability of the development project
Summary of the holding
The official text publishes no summary of the holding for this decision. The quotation and factors in this record are copied verbatim from the points at issue; the evidence for each axis is taken from the points at issue, the order and the reasons.
Order
원심판결을 파기하고, 사건을 수원고등법원에 환송한다.
Unofficial English translation
The judgment of the court below is reversed, and the case is remanded to the Suwon High Court.
Provisions referred to
[1] 행정소송법 제27조 [2] 행정소송법 제27조
Read 2026-10-26 · Cross-read 2026-10-26. All quotes matched against the official text. The Chinese-character placeholders the court used for anonymised parties are given in their Korean readings, and parenthetical Chinese-character glosses are omitted.
Every entry is published only after all quotes have been matched character by character against the official text, and audited by an independent second reading from a different model family across all eight axes. Both agreed axes and text-grounded interpretive divergences are recorded openly. The ledger is a research record, not an assessment of the court or advice on any matter.
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