‘Annual Working Days Reduced from 90 to 60’ Korea Forest Service Eases Eligibility Criteria for Forestry Direct Payments

The annual number of working days required for receiving forestry direct payments, one of the payment conditions, will be relaxed from 90 days to 60 days.

The Korea Forest Service announced on the 17th that starting this year, the annual working days requirement for forest management will be eased for forestry direct payments.

Provided by Korea Forest Service

The forestry direct payment system is a public direct payment program provided to qualified forest product producers and silviculture workers (foresters) to promote the public functions of forestry and forests and to compensate for the low income of foresters.

Last year, forestry direct payments were made to about 21,000 forest households, totaling 50.6 billion KRW. This amount increased by 8.1% compared to 46.8 billion KRW in 2022, resulting in an annual income improvement effect of 2.45 million KRW per household.

However, when the forestry direct payment system was introduced and implemented last year, there were opinions in the field that the required number of working days was excessively high compared to other direct payment systems such as the fisheries direct payment system. In the forestry sector, the high proportion of elderly workers made it difficult to prove the number of working days (previously 90 days) when preparing forest management logs.

To address this issue, the Korea Forest Service amended the "Enforcement Rules on the Operation of the Direct Payment System for the Promotion of Public Functions of Forestry and Forests" on October 16 last year.

The key change was to relax the annual working days requirement for forestry direct payment recipients working in the designated forest areas from the previous 90 days or more to 60 days or more.

The adjusted annual working days requirement will be applied starting from this year's forestry direct payment applications. The Korea Forest Service plans to accept applications from October 1 to 30, verify eligibility, check compliance with obligations, and begin payments from October.

To simplify the proof of working days for the forestry direct payment system, the Korea Forest Service will also establish the "Forestry Secretary" service, a smart forest management log. The Forestry Secretary will be developed with a focus on user convenience so that even elderly foresters can use it without difficulty.

Nam Sung-hyun, Administrator of the Korea Forest Service, said, "As part of regulatory improvements, we have lowered the annual working days requirement for foresters to 60 days. We will continue to boldly improve regulations that do not fit field conditions to expand beneficiaries of the forestry direct payment system and enhance convenience for foresters."