Republic of Korea

As of December 2020[1], the forest area of the Republic of Korea accounted for 62.6% (6.286 million ha) of its total land area of 10.041 million ha[2], ranking 4^th among OECD countries after Finland, Sweden, and Japan. As the designation of other roads such as the construction of roads, housing, and industrial complex has been changed, forests have been decreasing by an average of 9,635 ha per year for the past 5 years, down 48 kha (0.76%) from the end of 2015.

In the ROK, forests are categorized as national forests, public forests, or private forests. As a result of government policy aimed at expanding national forests to promote the public value of forests and expand carbon sinks, national forests are increasing but the total area of private forests remains the largest at 4,152 kha. The estimated total areas of national and public forests stand at 1,653 kha and 482 kha respectively. On the contrary, forest growing stock per hectare is the highest in national forests (182m³), which are systematically managed based on forest management plans such as afforestation and forest cultivation, followed by public forests (173.3m³) and private forests (157.5m³).

Forest growing stock was estimated to be 1.038 million m³ in December 2020, an increase of 113 million m³ (12.3%) compared to the end of 2015. The reason for the surge in forest growing stock is attributed mainly to the extensive forest management measures conducted by the Korea Forest Service (KFS) between the 1960s to early 1970s during the 1st and 2nd term of the national economic development plans. 

In terms of forest areas, coniferous forests accounted for the largest proportion as of 2020, but have been on a steady decline since 2003, and forest growing stock by type shows the distribution of coniferous forests 424,604 thousand m³ (45.9%), broadleaved forests 245,745 thousand m³ (26.6%), and mixed forests 254,461 thousand m³ (27.5%).

Forests in the ROK provide an estimated 195 billion USD worth of public benefit in 2018, constituting about 11.7% of the country’s GDP. Aside from absorbing 6.4% of the total GHG emission in the country, the ROK’s forests provide a myriad of other public benefits in terms of forest landscape, soil erosion prevention, forest recreation, watershed enhancement, water purification, oxygen generation, biodiversity conservation, landslide prevention, air quality improvement, and forest healing.

[Main reference] Korea Forest Service Official site.
[1] Korea Forest Service. 2021. The Statistical Yearbook of Forestry 2020.
[2] Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport. 2021. Cadastral Statistical Annual Report.