Research Background
Since 2018, the government has been promoting the establishment of a circular economic development in forest resources as one of the core tasks in the forest sector. It is to establish a forest business growth model through a system in which the entire process of forest creation, upbringing, production, processing, distribution, and utilization is circulated without interruption. It has been a continuing problem that the matured trees approaching their due production date, planted in the past, were not put into proper use. The main point of the circular economy in forest resources is expecting to focus on timber production and usage of resource circulation.
This study suggests that the establishment conditions of circular economic development in forest resources centers on forest supply. For this, we derived the direction of the forest management optimization through quantitative analysis. Two challenges in forest management are the optimization of management strategies for wood production and incorporating environmental values such as forest carbon uptake with the timber production model (Mendelsohn et al. 2017). This study proposes a deforestation plan that considers forest carbon dioxide uptake through an optimization model and predicts dynamic changes in the level of the potential supply of resources. Also, the study produces a target achievement index such as the comparison between the current state and the structure of the salary, the change in the rate of timber, and the change in the number of employees due to changes in forest management projects. In order to examine the practical problems that hinder the achievement of optimization and to discover its solution, we looked at Japan’s resource recycling policy, which has a similar purpose to our circular economy research in forest resources.

Research Methodology
This study is composed of the analysis of domestic forest resources and the current policy status, similar policy cases in Japan, and quantitative analysis. In the current situation analysis, we reviewed the definition of the Forest Resource Circular Economy, the central policies, the supply of forest resources, and the demand through literature research and statistical data. In the quantitative analysis, we derived the long-term harvesting plan, optimal harvesting age, and structure of maturity in the means to achieve the optimized state of the forest, also analyzing the target achievement index. We explored the direction of future policies in the Forest Resource Circular Economy, which is still in its early stages. We also looked into similar policies employed by Japan to improve the efficiency of domestic forest management as both countries are similar in terms of climate and the natural environment. Japan has often been a case of reference during the establishment of forestry policies in Korea as it faces similar difficulties to Korea, such as unbalanced age distribution, dispersed forests within mountainous regions, and a low drive to manage mountain stocks. In Japan, the resource recycling policy that was implemented earlier has a similar objective to Korea’s forest resource cycling system. Compared to Korea`s forest resource circulation economy, Japan`s policy focuses more on improving efficiency in the forest industry sector.
However, while Japan and Korea have similarities, there are also differences. So if we directly apply Japan's successful policy to Korea, it would be hard to achieve the same outcomes. We compared Japan’s forest management infrastructure to Korea’s to examine our deficiencies and strengths and to set the criteria for determining policy priorities.

Findings
The SWOT analysis of Korea's policies in the forest resource management sector shows that in order to have success in the forest resource circulation economy, there must be a shift in focus from recording and other quantitative growth toward qualitative growth such as "long-term planning for resource production" and "guaranteed efficiency." In order to increase the profit generated from the forest, Korea needs to improve the management. Moreover, it is necessary to increase the output per unit area and reduce the start-up cost. To do this, Korea has to establish an effective logging plan. Efficient deforestation is also a major management tool for achieving the optimal maturity structure of the forest. Efficient deforestation can lead to an optimal permanent structure for sustainable forestry services and the possibility of restructuring with species of high economic value. In order to quantitatively suggest the optimal logging plan, we applied the dynamic relationships of previous studies and predicted changes in supply by scenario. The scenarios were set in three: maintenance of status quo, comprehensive timber industry promotion plan, and optimization.


(The rest is omitted. See the attached file for details.)


Researchers: An Hyunjin, Lee Sangmin, Cho Sungju
Research period: 2019. 1. ~ 2019. 10.
E-mail address: hjan713@krei.re.kr