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1. Each real estate listed in the separate sheet No. 1 shall be put to an auction and the remainder after deducting the auction cost from the price;
Reasons
1. Facts without dispute;
A. The Plaintiff and the Defendants shared each real estate listed in the separate sheet No. 1 (hereinafter “instant real estate”) in proportion to co-ownership shares listed in the separate sheet No. 2.
B. The Plaintiff and the Defendants did not agree on the method of dividing the instant real estate.
2. Determination
A. The Plaintiff and the Defendants, as co-owners of the instant real estate, did not reach an agreement on the method of division. Therefore, the Plaintiff may request the Defendants to divide the instant real estate jointly owned.
(b) The method of partition of co-owned property (i) shall be, in principle, divided in kind as far as it is possible to make a reasonable partition according to the share of each co-owner, or, if it is impossible to divide in kind or in kind or it is possible to divide in kind, if the value thereof is likely to decrease remarkably, an auction may be ordered to be made.
In this case, the requirement that the “in-kind cannot be divided” should not be interpreted physically strictly, but include cases where it is difficult or inappropriate to divide the property in-kind in light of the nature, location, area, use status, use value, etc. of the property jointly owned in-kind.
(See Supreme Court Decision 2002Da4580 Decided April 12, 2002). The following circumstances are comprehensively taken into account: (a) the real estate of this case is a forest with the site of one parcel; (b) the land is located below the forest land; (c) there is a separate land owned by another person among forest land; (d) it is difficult to divide it in kind according to co-owners’ share; (b) the real estate of this case is the land category different; (c) it is not easy to compensate for the price to a specific co-owner; and (d) the Plaintiff and the Defendants did not reach an agreement on the method of partition despite several conciliations.