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North Korea Forestry
North Korea's forests have a variety of trees and other plant
life. Predominant trees include larch, poplar, oak, alder, pine,
spruce, and fir. In the early 1990s, approximately 80 percent of
the total area of the country, or 9.4 million hectares, was made
up of forests and woodlands; over 70 percent of these reserves
were in the mountainous Hamgyng provinces, and in Yanggang and
Chagang provinces. Much of this area was severely damaged by
overcutting during the last years of Japanese colonial rule and
by the effects of the Korean War. The government has promoted
afforestation projects to make up for these losses, and during
the First Seven-Year Plan an estimated 914,000 hectares were
planted, with an average of 2,900 trees per hectare. In the early
1970s, however, the rate of afforestation dropped to about 10,000
hectares per year.
Timber production was estimated at 600,000 cubic meters in
1977, basically unchanged since the late 1960s. In 1987, however,
timber production was estimated at 3 million cubic meters. The
amount of fuelwood available for rural households increased by 11
percent from 1970 to 1977, when approximately 4.6 million cubic
meters were used for heating.
The Ministry of Forestry was established in 1980 to oversee
the development of the forestry industry. The ministry sent
agents to the county level to manage the rotation of harvest and
replanting. Since the 1980s, almost no official quantitative
information on forestry has been forthcoming. The government
failed to mention the performance of the forestry sector in its
report on the fulfillment of the Second Seven-Year Plan, and the
Third Seven-Year Plan does not even contain any reference to
forestry.
Data as of June 1993
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