Forest Expert Urges Shift to Modern Management, Cites 'Half-Success'

South Korea's forest management, while successful in planting trees and cultivating forests under past administrations, has stalled at a "half-success" due to a failure to advance to modern, sustainable practices, according to forest expert Kim Taek-hwan.

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We have to move beyond Park Chung-hee's 'afforestation' and Kim Dae-jung's 'forest cultivation' to modern forest management.

Kim, director of the Future Transition Policy Research Institute, noted that while the Park Chung-hee government focused on "afforestation" (planting trees) and the Kim Dae-jung government on "forest cultivation" (caring for planted trees), contemporary forest management, which utilizes and leverages these resources, has not been fully realized. This is partly due to a perception that logging and road construction equate to environmental destruction, hindering progress in areas like selective logging and forest road development.

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The reason for the half-success is that we haven't moved towards modern forest management that utilizes and leverages our forests.

The nation's timber self-sufficiency rate stands at a mere 19.6%, a low figure for a country with 63% of its land covered by forests and recognized for successful reforestation. This contrasts sharply with Japan's 50% and the United States' over 70%. Kim argues that falling behind in timber utilization compared to developed nations is a primary reason for the limited success of modern forest management.

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It is time to think differently about selective logging and forest road construction, even for the sake of maintaining forest health.

To move forward, Kim proposes keywords like 'circulation' and 'connection' for new forest policies. He suggests inter-Korean forest cooperation, building on past experiences in nursery development and pest control. This could involve modernizing nurseries, implementing small-scale pilot projects for pest management, and long-term plans for joint forest protection and integrated management of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Kim emphasizes that such cooperation, combined with environmental and climate initiatives and improvements in local livelihoods and energy structures, would yield the most practical and sustainable results.

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We have entered an advanced stage of not just cultivating trees but also maintaining the health of the forest ecosystem while sustainably utilizing its resources.