지방소멸에 대비한 지역문화의 법적보호 방안

As the crisis of regional extinction deepens, population decline is no longer a matter of quantitative demographic indicators alone; it is evolving into a qualitative crisis entailing the erosion and disintegration of local cultural ecosystems. The outflow of population and the weakening of cultural communities form a mutually accelerating cycle of decline, expanding beyond the deterioration of regional identity into a cultural security challenge that undermines the very foundations of national cultural competitiveness. Nevertheless, the current legal framework constructs legislation addressing regional extinction and legislation promoting regional culture as parallel systems without normative linkage, revealing a structural limitation whereby the simultaneous progression of population outflow and cultural community disintegration within the same locality is treated as two separate and unrelated problems. Departing from this critical awareness, this article systematically analyzes the institutional functions and structural limitations of the existing legal framework governing regional extinction response and regional cultural promotion along four axes: legislative integration, the binding character of support measures, the directionality of authority allocation, and the normative vacuum in intellectual property protection. On this basis, it comparatively examines Japan’s Regional Revitalization Act and Depopulated Areas Act, the United States’ National Historic Preservation Act and local ordinance systems, and the EU’s Common Provisions Regulation and Geographical Indications Regulation, deriving legislative implications for models that normatively unite regional extinction response with regional cultural promotion. In this process, particular attention is paid to the manner in which each jurisdiction positions regional cultural promotion as an internal constituent element of regional extinction response through the coordination of planning systems and the allocation of fiscal authority and competences. The cases surveyed commonly suggest that normative designs which locate regional cultural promotion at the center rather than the periphery of regional extinction policy constitute a prerequisite for effective policy implementation. On the basis of this analysis, this article proposes legislative improvements directed toward the explicit integration of cultural values into the statutory purposes and planning frameworks of relevant legislation, the establishment of concrete and binding support measures, the transition to a bottom-up legislative structure premised upon the autonomous norm-formation of regional communities, and the construction of a collective intellectual property protection regime for regional cultural assets. Ultimately, it is submitted that the normative reconnection of regional extinction response and regional cultural promotion calls for a fundamental reconstitution of the legal and institutional foundations necessary to secure the sustainability of the cultural ecosystem.