Hanns-Seidel-Foundation since several years implements a project on sustainable forestry in North Korea. There, forests suffered tremendously due to two decades of economic and energy crisis. In South Korea Hanns-Seidel-Foundation cooperates with the Korea Forestry Research Institute, the state research institute on forestry, for the preparation of a future unification of the forest sector and the search for ways to reforest North Korea’s forests. South Korea’s forests were also decimated after the Korean War, but since the 1960s a very successful afforestation programme rehabilitated the forests.

This year Hanns-Seidel-Foundation carried out a research project for the KFRI on forest cooperation before and (mostly) after unification. While during socialist times there were very few contacts between foresters of East and West, after the peaceful revolution in East Germany and before unification broad cooperation on various levels of forest administration ensued.  Numerous experts from the West helped to found a modern forest administration in the new states of East Germany. Each of the five new states in East Germany was paired with one or several partner states in the West, like Saxony and Bavaria.  Until 1994 most of the work to found a modern forest service was done, but newly created partnerships and also often friendships remained. Today, both the forest administration in East as well as in West Germany has to cope with new challenges, but by and large the transformation in the forest sector can be evaluated as very successful.

In late November Mr. Young-Soo Kim, project manager of Hanns-Seidel-Foundation Korea, presented the research results in KFRI. The situation in East Germany and North Korea starkly differed, said Kim. In particular, the East German forest service was never so much isolated from international research and the situation of forests was – all in all – not so bad in East Germany. Projects of Hanns-Seidel-Foundation in North Korea would be model projects for afforestation benefitting the whole of Korea, said Kim. The forest research projects also included a study trip of KFRI in summer to Germany as well as an invitation of forest director Michael Schneider of Kulmbach in October 2012.