Residents Call Reforestation Efforts ‘Futile’

North Korea continues to move forward with
its reforestation efforts – a project laid out by leader Kim Jong Eun in his
New Year’s Address – but people have called the campaign futile, saying the
trees will not last unless their standard of living improves, Daily NK has
learned. 

“The state has recently been holding
meetings and lectures on reforestation, emphasizing the public must take part,
but people are saying these efforts go against their needs,” a source in
Yangkang Province told Daily NK on Monday. “The fundamental quality of life for
people has not improved, so regardless of how many trees they plant, they will
all end up being used for firewood.” 

She noted that the population largely agrees that the country will not see lush forests covering its landscape until the overall economic situation improves. “When people run out of food or firewood,
they will use anything they can to cultivate land and knock down trees to get
enough fuel,” she pointed out. 

Due to the reforestation projects, people have
been restricted from felling trees for firewood. As a result, in some areas
more residents are cutting down trees in the middle of the night, forcing
forest workers to patrol the areas at all hours, according to the source.

“The forest workers criticize the
authorities for doing everything so backwards. They claim if people had enough
food, the state would not have to hand over so much coal to China, and if that’s
the case there would be enough coal to keep people from cutting down trees,” she explained. “They say no one would want to go through the trouble of
cultivating plots in the middle of the mountains if there were enough rations.”

Residents have also pointed out there would be
enough trees if not for the massive amounts being destroyed for
construction or development purposes. “People say that the Masikryong Ski Resort
looks great on the outside but barely anyone uses it–they want to know how that warrants cutting down trees that had been there for decades,” she said.

The source acknowledged that creating
slash-and-burn fields and individual plots to till during the Arduous March [North Korea’s famine of the mid 1990s] may have contributed
to the country’s deforestation, but that the state’s projects in the late ‘90s and early 2000s to develop expansive fields carried equally devastating effects.