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Forest Service's ambitious tree planting goals for next decade hearken back to 1970s initiatives

Published: 08 Mar. 2026, 15:57 Updated: 08 Mar. 2026, 16:10

A bird eats a cornelian cherry fruit in Hamyang County, South Gyeongsang, on March 4. [YONHAP]

DAEJEON — The Korea Forest Service (KFS) will plant 36 million trees across 18,000 hectares (44,478 acres) this year, an initiative tied to the country’s 2035 greenhouse gas reduction target and reminiscent of the large-scale forest greening campaign of the 1970s.

The trees will cover an area roughly 60 times the size of Mount Namsan in central Seoul and could store about 130,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually, according to the KFS on Sunday. The project is a nationwide tree-planting campaign aimed at mobilizing public participation while planting.

Forests account for 97 percent of Korea’s total carbon sinks. One ton of trees absorbs and stores about 1.84 tons of carbon dioxide over its lifetime.

The KFS also plans to plant trees across 9,891 hectares to grow wood for industrial purposes. It will also plant trees that help bees make honey and grow different kinds of trees suited to each area so forests can create more economic value.

“The number of areas that need tree planting continues to increase as forests damaged by last year’s large wildfires in the Gyeongsang region expand,” said Minister of the KFS Park Eun-sik. “This year also marks the first year of implementing the 2035 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), so we decided to launch a nationwide tree-planting campaign.”

Large wildfires swept parts of the Gyeongsang region in 2025, burning vast areas of forest and leaving significant damage in places such as Uiseong County in North Gyeongsang. The campaign also aligns with Korea’s NDC, the country’s climate pledge under the Paris Agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The KFS plans to plant trees nationwide with public institutions, private companies, civic groups and citizens. It will hold tree-planting events at 224 locations and distribute 464,000 seedlings and seeds.

A wildfire warning flag flutters in the wind in front of a hillside in Uiseong County, North Gyeongsang, on Jan. 29. [NEWS1]

The KFS will also hold tree-planting events across the country, encouraging people to plant trees for their hometowns while organizing additional activities to restore forests in wildfire-damaged areas in the Gyeongsang region. Tree planting began in Jeju in February and will continue through April.

The KFS plans to plant relatively large trees, aged five to seven years, in wildfire-damaged areas such as Uiseong County in North Gyeongsang. It will plant two-to-three-year-old seedlings in other regions.

Tree species will vary by region. The KFS plans to plant birch and Korean pine in northern areas, sawtooth oak, zelkova and Japanese larch in central regions, Chinese fringe trees in southern regions and machilus trees in Jeju and along the southern coast.

The government will also add more green spaces in populated areas. It plans to establish 187 urban forests, including 90 large areas with many trees, 15 areas with trees that help air move through the city and 82 small areas with trees near homes to help absorb carbon dioxide.

“This large amount of tree planting is similar to the forest restoration campaign carried out during the presidency of Park Chung Hee,” said Kim Hye-young, an official in the KFS’s Forest Resources Division.

Korea’s forest restoration campaign began in January 1973 when then -President Park declared during a New Year’s press conference that he would implement “a 10-year plan to turn the country into a fully green landscape by the early 1980s.”

President Park Chung Hee, right, plants a tree on Arbor Day on April 5, 1972. [JOONGANG ILBO]

In March that year, then Minister of Home Affairs Kim Hyun-ok brought together regional government leaders and police officials to introduce a 10-year national plan to restore forests that ran from 1973 to 1982.

“Mountains come first and second, and rural development comes first and second as well, so officials must push the two efforts forward together,” Kim said at the time.

The government later set March 21 to April 20 each year as the annual tree-planting season. Forest rangers rode ponies to patrol mountains and police officers watched for people cutting down or damaging trees illegally.

Korea has planted about 14.5 billion trees since liberation from Japanese colonial rule (1910-45). Forest volume has reached 165 cubic meters (5,826 cubic feet) per hectare, nearly 30 times higher than 50 years ago, exceeding the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average of 131 cubic meters.

President Roh Tae-woo plants a tree on Arbor Day on April 5, 1989. [JOONGANG ILBO]

The forest restoration campaign has often been described as part of the “Miracle on the Han River,” a term used to describe Korea’s rapid economic growth and development in the decades after the Korean War (1950-53).

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations described Korea as the only developing country that successfully restored its forests after World War II.

Unesco also added Korea’s forest restoration records from 1973 to 2007 to the Memory of the World Register in April last year.

“I hope many people will show interest in and participate in the nationwide tree-planting campaign,” said KFS Minister Park Eun-sik.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY KIM BANG-HYUN [[email protected]]