Wildfires, afforestation and climate change adaptation in South and North Korea

By Bernhard J. Seliger

On a late March Sunday around noon in Mount Inwang, just opposite the former presidential palace, the Blue House, trees suddenly burst into flames like matches, smoke develops and in an incredibly short space of time the whole mountain is enveloped in dark smoke clouds. People are evacuated, fire trucks race through the city and soon the first helicopters arrive bringing woefully inadequate amounts of water to quench the flames. It will take more than 24 hours until the fire is finally extinguished completely. In the end, 15 hectares or more ―approximately 21 soccer fields ― of forest have been destroyed. Fortunately, this time it did not cost any lives.

Unfortunately, this dramatic episode was not unique, but part of the seasonal wildfires occurring regularly on the Korean Peninsula. And they are not always so relatively harmless like the one here in the middle of Seoul. In 2022, a devastating fire in Gangwon Province in Uljin, Samcheok, Gangneung and Donghae burned down an estimated 20,923 hectares of forest. In 2018, a person lost his life in a forest fire in Goseong at the inter-Korean border. Most tragically, almost always human negligence, like thrown-away cigarette butts or, even worse, arson is the cause for these fires.

Forest fires are not confined to Korea. In the last decade, a debate broke out if they might be the result of climate change, with more instances of drought. The verdict on this is still out: the "critical environmentalist" Bjorn Lomborg describes in a study how forest fires in the past were much more frequent and damaging in terms of forest lost. There were simply far less people recording it and suffering from it, since the Earth was much less populated.

Certainly, changes in the way forests and water resources are managed (and often wasted) contribute to wildfires. Instead of blaming the somewhat elusive climate change, it would be good to see how these water resources could actually be managed better. This is particularly true in a country like Korea, which has overall abundant resources of water, but at a great variance over time (monsoon rains and humidity in summer and dry cold winters).

Moreover, Korea with a number of agricultural and forest policies does not really care well for water resources all the time. North Korea, the other part of the Korean Peninsula, has even worse records of forest fires. Here, they are often related to the old but dangerous customs of burning away vegetation on fields and in reed beds, for example, to reduce the number of insects, or to use the burnt vegetation as fertilizer. Sparks from the burning fields fly to the forests and huge losses of forests in the already-deforested country ensue. And here, no fire trucks are available, not to speak of helicopters, to fight the fire…

What can be done? First of all, all available data must be collected to monitor fire hazards and being prepared and equipped to respond to fire hazards is an important step. Korea excels in this step. When in May 2022 the International Forestry Congress was held in Seoul, I had the chance to accompany a German delegation to the National Institute of Forest Sciences (NIFOS) and visit the ultra-modern fire monitoring center, where live data of all of South Korea helps the NIFOS to give a quick answer to any fire. Clearly, provincial authorities need to ensure firefighters are properly equipped and trained to respond quickly. But, besides this immediate and often successful remedy, a look at the deeper causes of wildfires might help.

One problem is the pine tree mono-culture in many Korean forests. While mixed forests can also burn, the rate of burning is slower and the likelihood of a fire breaking out is much lower if there is a mixture of broadleaf and coniferous trees. The Korean love for pine trees is admirable ― but for the mountains, mixed forests provide often better solutions and also a much higher degree of biodiversity than pine forest monocultures. This would also stop the rapid spread of forest pests like pine moth caterpillars and this again would lead to less dry, dead pine trees, a premium fodder for any wildfire. A second problem arises from the "solution" to the problem of abundant summer rain. The solution has been to bring the water as soon as possible down from the mountains into underground reservoirs in Seoul.

I myself live near Mount Bukhan, and the small valley close to my home once had a beautiful small stream, partly dry, but always with some puddles left (though unfortunately quite littered by locals). As an obvious solution to potential water problems, some years ago the whole small stream was concreted and artificial walls ― certainly very costly ― were built from big boulders, with some shrubs not fitting in the wild planted alongside. Now, water flows fast, erosion of soil is terrible, and now and then ― like this year again ― local community workers come and pour more concrete into the bed of the stream.

While certainly financed by a disaster or environmental budget, the result is the contrary of sustainable ― a radical loss of biodiversity (at least four species of amphibians, among them Korean salamanders, completely disappeared), and overall a much drier valley. Given that this is the policy everywhere in Korea, not only for forests, but also for agricultural areas, where deep concrete trenches take water away as soon as it arrives in form of rain, there is no wonder that conditions across the whole country get drier and drier.

Making the country more resilient against forest fires does not apply only to South Korea. As said, the situation in North Korea is much worse. And the interest in technologies to discover and fight forest fires, as well as to make forest and water management better equipped to reduce the likelihood of forest fires is high on the agenda in the North Korean forest service too. Certainly, when it comes to North Korea, politics always trump policies. But, if there is an opening for renewed cooperation, fighting against forest fires ― including a protocol on how to aid each other in the case of the not infrequent forest fires in the DMZ ― would be a very good start.

In a country as populated as South Korea it is certainly not easy to balance requirements of agriculture, disaster management, ecology and human recreation in dense inhabited spaces like Seoul. But the ironic fact is that often "less is more" ― less investment and disturbance of natural water flows will probably be more beneficial to the overall water household, but also to human recreation and disaster management.

Research into the resilience of tree species is helpful, as is more knowledge on how to fight disasters, but the idea to surgically remove disaster sources often worsens the overall situation, at a high cost. Korea´s tree-planting campaigns of the 1960s to 1980s found a lot of admiration around the world ― now, it is time to diversify and make Korean forests more resilient!

Dr. Bernhard J. Seliger is a resident representative of the Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSF) in Korea, based in Seoul. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, he traveled frequently to North Korea, where he implemented projects on forestry, environment and renewable energy as well as medical cooperation. He is an honorary citizen of Seoul and Gangwon Province.