It is not in a further future that urban areas will be filled with greenery instead of blackish asphalted roads and grey concrete walls, and surrounded with birds singing instead of car horns.


Chief Suh Seung-jin of the Korea Forest Service is enhancing forest building projects, such as the urban forest project, the school forest project, the tree-planting-on-the street project, and the expressway forest project. In an effort for the projects, the Korea Forest Service has planned to plant scenery trees of 3 million in residential areas nationwide and to tend forests along side expressways.


The urban forest project is to make cities greener and to build up forest theme parks whose themes are ecosystem, education and recreation. Small sized forests or land out of use will be used for the project rather than setting up artificial facilities in forests, such as physical exercise appliances and amusement appliances.


The Korea Forest Service is urging citizens and local people to get interested and involved in designing forests in which wild animals and insects can inhabit. 268 urban forests will have been built by 2014.


Regarding the school forest project, KFS has already set the budget of 3.1 billion won and 300 schools have been chosen for the project. KFS has been collaborating with a civil organization named Forest for Life on creating and tending school forests in order for culture of aesthetic sentiments and recreation places for the youth. The school forest project is to help students pay attention to their studies, maximizing forest functions that prevent noises, control atmospheric temperature and block the view of outdoors. Forests at 866 schools, sponsored by the Forest for Life organization, have been built since 1999.


For greener cities, KFS also has the tree-planting-on-the-street project with the budget of 16 billion won in cooperation with local governments. The project is to plant trees more adaptable to the urban environment and to tend and nourish them.


Furthermore, there is the expressway forest project whose aims are to protect roads from slope-slide, to beautify expressway areas and to mitigate noises and dust from the expressways. The project begun first around the Seoul-Busan Expressway and will be continued around other expressways till this December.


Director-General of Forest Resources Bureau in KFS said regarding urban forests ’While green areas are being reduced due to the rapid construction development, building urban forests can provide pleasant and healthy surroundings for life and expand sink as well.’





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