韓国

More than 90% of timber supply in Republic of Korea depends on logs imported from overseas. Most of them were the tropical timbers which had been used as materials of plywood industry until 1970. Since 1980, wood industry in Korea had been in difficulties for steady supply of the materials because of the strong export prohibition of the export countries, which was resulted from the policies for protecting both the wood product industry inside the countries and environment, hence resulted the reduction of felling amount and the log export prohibition regulation. Therefore, the decrease in export of the wood processing products in Korea resulted serious stagnation for the export of Korea's wood industry. The competition of Korea's products in oversea market also dropped rapidly off as a result of a large amount of export of the wooden products from some countries of Southeastern Asia, such as Indonesia and Malaysia. Moreover, the structure of timber import of Korea converted from the type of log import in 1970 into that of wood products import, with increasing the import of the products like plywood and lumber. Consequently, the increase of import of wood products brought the decline of plywood and lumber industries and their productions. In contrast, increasing demand for paper, pulp, particloboard and fiberboard has resulted the expansion of their industries and imports. In future, it is expected the increase of supply for PB and MDF which are known as a substitutive material for particleboard and fiberboard.