South Korea’s forest wood volume has grown 30-fold since the 1950s, when the country’s hillsides lay stripped bare by colonial-era exploitation, war, and fuel demand. More than 10 billion trees went into the ground between the 1960s and 1980s, according to the Korea Forest Service — but a new peer-reviewed study shows that number alone doesn’t explain why the effort actually worked, while other campaigns elsewhere have planted just as many trees without building lasting forests.
At a glance
- Trees planted: More than 10 billion trees went into the ground between the 1960s and 1980s, according to the Korea Forest Service.
- Growing stock: Standing wood volume rose from 5.6 cubic meters per hectare in 1952 to roughly 165 cubic meters per hectare by 2020 — nearly 30 times higher.
- Survival rates: Newly planted trees survived at rates often below 50% in the 1950s, climbing above 90% by the late 1970s, according to a 2026 study in Environmental Management.
Bare mountains, by the numbers
When the Korean War ended in 1953, the country’s hillsides bore the damage of decades of colonial-era exploitation, wartime destruction, and heavy cutting for fuel. National assessments in the 1950s and early 1960s classified more than 4 million hectares — nearly 58% of the country’s forest land — as degraded or “bare mountain,” according to the 2026 study, published in Environmental Management and based on more than 9,000 archival records spanning 1953 to 2020.
Planting was the easy part
The Korea Forest Service was established in 1967, and the First Ten-Year Forest Rehabilitation Plan began in 1973 under President Park Chung-hee, tied to the country’s broader Saemaul, or New Village, rural development movement. Village nurseries alone supplied nearly 35% of the roughly 2.7 billion seedlings produced nationally during that first plan, part of a broader wave of reforestation wins unfolding worldwide.
But planting seedlings and growing forests turned out to be two different problems. District officials, followed by higher-level inspectors, checked whether planted trees had actually survived; failures required replanting the following spring. That feedback loop, not the raw planting totals, is what the study credits for turning early failures into lasting forest, and government records cited by the researchers show it worked: survival rates rose from often below 50% in the 1950s to above 90% by the late 1970s.
A recovery that’s still being tested
Former UN Environment Programme chief Inger Andersen visited Korea’s restored forests and told the Korea Times in 2023, “It’s hard to find comparisons with other places where you see the same determination and success.”
The comeback isn’t finished, though. Much of the country’s forest is now aging past 31 years old, according to the Korea Forest Service, raising new management questions, and a 2021 modeling study found that current forest management practices alone are projected to fall short of fully offsetting future biodiversity losses from climate and land-use pressure.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Environmental Management
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Ethiopia plants 700 million seedlings in a single day
- Kazakhstan restores forests to prepare for tiger return
- The Good News for Humankind archive on trees & reforestation
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