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South Korea Forestry and Fishing
South Korean farmers have always used the nation's forests
for fuel and household products, but centuries of overutilization
and poor resource management had practically denuded the
countryside by the end of the Choson Dynasty (1392-1910). World
War II interrupted Japanese efforts to replace the ravaged forest
stock and the Korean War brought to a peak the destruction of
Korea's forests. After the 1950s, Seoul slowly developed the
organizational and technical expertise to save the nation's
trees. Despite frequent setbacks, reforestation had proceeded
fairly successfully by the 1970s; the total volume of timber had
grown from a low of 30.8 million cubic meters in 1954 to over
164.4 million cubic meters in 1984. The density of the woodlands
expanded from an average of 4.8 to 17.8 cubic meters per hectare
of forest during the same period.
By 1984 over 20 percent of the nation's 6.5 million hectares
of forest belonged to the government; most was managed by the
Office of Forestry, a branch of the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Another 8 percent was owned by local public authorities; 72
percent was privately owned. In 1985 about two-thirds of South
Korea was covered by forests. Until the 1970s, reforestation had
taken place primarily in national forests; as a result of this
situation, the density of government-owned forests was about
three times greater than that of private forests. Most forest
owners were smallholders with inadequate financial resources to
purchase and maintain seedlings. Upon the introduction of the
Saemaul Movement, however, an ambitious rural development program
launched by Park in 1971, the performance of the Village Forestry
Associations--similar to and often overlapping with the
agricultural cooperatives--improved significantly. Between 1972
and 1979, forestry agents and village associations planted 1.4
million hectares with 3.4 million seedlings.
Although the fuel needs of most farmers were met by wood from
local forests or coal briquettes, the growing industrial demand
for timber was not adequately supplied by domestic production. In
1977 South Korea imported 88 percent of its timber, mostly from
Malaysia and Indonesia. In 1985 South Korea imported US$538
million worth of wood, lumber, and cork; imports were US$549
million in 1986.
South Korea's fishing industry contributed both to the
welfare of the consumer and to export earnings. Although the
value-added income from fishing contributed less than 1 percent
of GNP and the fishing population decreased by over 18 percent
during the 1970s (to 745,000 persons), fishery products
contributed 5 percent of the value of commodity exports. Fishery
production totaled 470,000 tons in 1962, 1.3 million tons in
1972, 2.6 million tons in 1982, and 3.3 million tons in 1987. In
1988 South Korean fishing households earned about US$10,000 on
average.
Most of the expansion of production in the 1970s and 1980s
was the result of deep-sea fishing operations. The major fishing
ports were Ulsan and Masan. In the late 1980s, the production of
seaweed, oyster, and other products of coastal and offshore
breeding farms declined, but the catch of tuna and squid in deepsea fishing rose. Fishing trawlers brought in about 250,000 tons
of pollock off the coast of Alaska in 1985, a catch that both
contributed to the South Korean diet and was exported to United
States food processors.
In 1985 there were 90,970 fishing vessels harvesting a total
catch of 858,471 tons. Of these vessels, 71,836 were motorized
(836,633 tons) and 19,134 (21,838 tons) were nonmotorized. These
numbers reflected a major change from 1962, when only 6,085
vessels out of 45,504 were motorized.
Data as of June 1990
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