Background of Research
Forest areas should be utilized efficiently to increase the income in forestry management, and their use can be boosted through support policies. Forest production and management policies focused on forest trees’ growth and timber production. The policies, which have not allocated a part of forest areas for producing non-timber forest products or have not considered non-timber forestry management equally with silviculture, could not solve timber production’s low profitability. This study aims to present policy alternatives and system improvement plans to promote the use of mountain areas by seeking for ways to increase their leases.

Method of Research
This study was conducted through literature research, domestic and overseas field works, surveys on people engaged in forestry and officials in charge, and an entrusted survey on the case village. For the field survey, we investigated the current state of a typical mountain village’s land use by lot and forest owner. We also interviewed forestry holdings leasing a mountain area. For the overseas field work, we visited Switzerland and examined its present status of forest management and forest-land use. We questioned people engaged in forestry through mail surveys and interviews and the Korea Forest Service’s public officials through mail surveys.

Research Results and Implications
The case study on Hwaak-ri shows the typical Korean mountain village’s forest-land use. Forest owners are not very interested in mountain areas’ silvicultural utilization, which leads to their insufficient use. On the other hand, success factors for forestry management enterprises leasing the areas are that they produce non-timber forest products and can lease the large areas.
According to the Swiss case analysis, the country has established a forest-land use structure clearly different from an ownership structure. Compared to it, Korea has not institutionally classified the concepts of forest owners and forestry holdings.
To achieve forestry policies’ top goal of sustainable forest development, forestry management’s economic sustainability should be secured first. For this, existing laws centered on forest preservation should be changed into a balanced system coordinated with policies and projects for increasing forestry management’s economic efficiency. Accordingly, the basic policy direction needs to be modified as follows.
First, it is necessary to set principles and standards that ease regulations at the level of forest-land conservation which limit its forestry use.
Second, it is needed to abolish regulations on non-timber forest products production in forest areas and to eliminate discrimination between the timber-producing silviculture industry and the non-timber forest products industry.
Third, the total size of forest areas should be set where non-timber production forestry management is possible permanently. Fourth, it is necessary to find and support new business organizations or forest-land use plans that can contribute to improving the forestry management structure. The measures include remodelling of cooperative management, which was presented earlier, into a form that forest owners participate in holdings’ decision-making.


Researchers: Kim Soo-suk; Seok Hyun-deok; Han Hye-sung
Reserch Period: 2014. 1. ～ 2014. 10.
E-mail address: soosuk@krei.re.kr