South Korea's forests

South Korea's forests were heavily cut during the Japanese occupation and the Korean War (1950 to 1953). Until the late 1950s, 58 percent of the mountains were bald, and people relied on firewood.

In 1973 the government launched the first Ten-Year Forest Rehabilitation Plan, to replant 1 million hectares with 2.1 billion trees. It was done in six years: 1.08 million hectares and 2.96 billion plants.

Villages did much of the work through the Saemaul (New Village) movement. Village plantings covered 470,000 hectares, 43 percent of all afforestation from 1973 to 1978, and village nurseries grew more than a third of the seedlings. Villages shared profits from fuelwood forests, and switching to coal reduced the need to cut the hills.

A second ten-year plan followed and was finished in nine years. Satellite records show the young forests growing and their growing season lengthening. Forest now covers about 64 percent of the land.

• National ten-year replanting plans with clear targets
• Village forestry cooperatives and the Saemaul movement doing the planting
• Village nurseries that paid members and built village funds
• Profit sharing on fuelwood forests between villages and landowners
• Switching homes from firewood to coal

Villagers across the country, working through village forestry cooperatives and the Saemaul movement, with the national government and forest service setting the plans.

Much of the forest is young and was planted in a short burst, so it is fairly uniform in age.

Forest area has eased slightly since 1990, from about 68 to about 64 percent of the land.

• National targets work best when villages do the planting and share the benefits.
• Give people another fuel and the hills can rest.
• A whole country can turn bare hills into forest within one generation.