Korea Forest Service Reports 380,000 Pine Trees Affected by Pine Wilt Disease Nationwide, a 23% Increase from Last Year

Nam Taeheon, Deputy Director of the Korea Forest Service, is presenting the "2021 Pine Wilt Disease Control Results" at the Government Complex Daejeon on the 18th. Photo by Korea Forest Service

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] In the past year, 380,000 pine trees affected by pine wilt disease have been detected nationwide and completely removed. The forestry authorities plan to form a joint inspection team to conduct a thorough survey, focusing on areas with concentrated damage.

On the 18th, the Korea Forest Service announced the "2021 Pine Wilt Disease Control Results" at the Government Complex Daejeon, containing these details.

Previously, from May last year to April this year, the Korea Forest Service discovered 380,000 pine trees affected by pine wilt disease across 135 cities, counties, and districts nationwide and removed them all.

During this period, the number of pine wilt disease occurrence sites increased from 131 in April 2021 to 135 last year, an increase of four locations. Among these were seven new (or reoccurring) sites including Wanju, Hampyeong, Hwasun, Naju, Chungju, Busan, Yeonje-gu, and Donghae.

The increase in affected areas coincided with a rise in the number of damaged trees. The Korea Forest Service estimates that the number of affected trees increased by 22.6%, from 310,000 in April 2021 to 380,000 as of last month.

Notably, the number of pine wilt disease-affected trees had been decreasing annually since peaking at 2.18 million in 2014, but this year showed a rising trend again.

The Korea Forest Service attributes the increased damage this year to delayed symptom manifestation and difficulties in personnel access, which made timely detailed surveillance challenging. They also analyze that due to these circumstances, untreated trees became sources of infection, spreading pine wilt disease to surrounding areas and expanding the damage.

However, the Korea Forest Service has actively identified previously overlooked affected trees and controlled them, and based on this, they forecast that the scale of damage will decrease in the future.

Separately, the Korea Forest Service plans to place greater emphasis on managing regions where the pine wilt disease situation has recently worsened.

The priority management areas include Ulsan Buk-gu, Gyeonggi Yangpyeong, Gyeongbuk Goryeong, and Gyeongnam Miryang. This is because the damage severity in these areas has increased from mild to moderate or severe recently.

Typically, damage severity is classified as follows: less than 1,000 affected trees is 'mild', 1,000 to 10,000 is 'light', 10,000 to 30,000 is 'moderate', 30,000 to 50,000 is 'severe', and over 50,000 is 'extreme'. Reflecting this, three areas including Ulsan Buk-gu were upgraded from light to moderate, and Gyeongnam Miryang from light to severe.

Accordingly, the Korea Forest Service will form a joint inspection team to conduct a full survey of the four areas with upgraded damage severity and prepare corresponding follow-up measures based on the survey results.

Additionally, before the completion of the control project design service, related experts will conduct pre-consultations to improve control quality, and any poor design, construction, or supervision at control project sites will be detected and administrative actions requested from local governments, according to the Korea Forest Service.

Nam Tae-heon, Deputy Director of the Korea Forest Service, said, "As the number of pine wilt disease-affected trees increases, the number of areas with fewer affected trees is also rising. The Korea Forest Service will focus on identifying and completely controlling affected trees while also striving for the rapid transition of mildly affected areas to clean zones."