TOP 10 Forest News Stories of 2017

The year 2017 was marked by tangible achievements in the forestry field.
Here are top 10 forest stories selected through a survey of journalists and Korea Forest Service (KFS) staff.

1. “Forest Vision” is pronounced in the celebration of KFS’s golden jubilee.
At the commemorative ceremony of the 50th anniversary of KFS last October, Minister pronounced “Forest Vision” with the theme of 100-year forests beyond miracle, which aims at creating more forest jobs, conserving the ecosystem and expanding forest welfare to improve the quality of people’s lives.

2. Forest fires broke out in the eastern cities of Gangneung, Samcheok and Sangju. The wind-fed fires burned 1,103 ha of well-tended forests in Gangwon province and inflicted huge losses of property estimated at around 14 million USD, which alerted the people to the dangers of forest fires as well as ensuing impacts.

3. Baekdu-san Tiger (Siberian tiger) is returned after 100 years to the arms of Baekdudaegan mountains (the main mountain range of the Korean peninsula).

4. KFS develops an unmanned remote control system to detect land creeping.
With this land creeping detection system, KFS made initial observations of earthquakes in Pohang and managed to take the immediate countermeasures.

5. Forest job creation headquarters is launched at KFS as a control tower of forest job creation policy with the aim of creating 60,000 job opportunities by 2022.

6. 10 famous national forests of forest management and forest landscape are among the most popular tourist attractions and the growing number of visitors chooses those high quality forests for days out or holiday destinations.

7. Data and information on hiking trails 33,000 km long in total is wide open to the public, which contributes to supporting public convenience improvement projects.

8. On the 100th day of his inauguration, KFS Minister KIM Jaehyun reaffirms to make more determined efforts to increase people’s happiness through the introduction of forest resources circular economy as a new economic paradigm.

9. The era of tall wood buildings is on set thanks to improved timber technologies including fire safety advantages and timber structural engineering.

10. “Seed Vault” at the Baekdudaegan National Arboretum stores up rare plant seeds including those from Mt. Halla in Jeju Island.


Throughout 2018 KFS will continue to uphold the forest vision for contributing to people’s happiness through forests.