The Korea Forest Service will organize the National Pine Wilt Disease Control Corps to take charge of responding to the domestic spread of pine wilt disease. It plans to build a nationwide containment line and carry out region-specific, tailored control measures by using satellites, drones and AI for monitoring.
Park Eun-sik, head of the Korea Forest Service, said at a briefing on the National Pine Wilt Disease Control Strategy held at the Government Complex Daejeon on the 3rd that "to overcome the limits of control outcomes that vary widely by local government, we will establish a new organization to respond to pine wilt disease and implement tailored control measures suited to regional conditions."
The Korea Forest Service has shifted to a system in which the state directly commands pine wilt disease control and launched the National Pine Wilt Disease Control Corps on the 1st.
The corps will perform the mission of supporting and managing, at the national level, everything from local governments' control plan establishment to monitoring, control and performance management. The organization designates the Vice Administrator of the Korea Forest Service as director general, and divides the country into four major regions, appointing officials at the Director General level or higher as regional responsible officers.
The control method will also shift from focusing on damaged trees to precision management at the forest unit. Forests will be subdivided into 1-hectare units and assigned unique identification numbers, and a Pine Wilt Disease Precision Management System that manages outbreak status and control history will be pilot-operated from the second half of this year. Advanced technologies such as satellites, helicopters, drones and AI will also be used to systematically manage the entire process from monitoring to control and post-management.
Administrator Park said, "In Gyeongsang, where damage is severe, we will protect important pine stands such as Geumgangsong forests by using the national control belt, while simultaneously removing hazardous trees and converting species," adding, "On the west coast, where spread is increasing, we will prevent inland spread by designating special control zones and building a national control belt, and we will also expand industrialized control in which local wood industry companies directly participate in control and the use of damaged trees." Park added, "Although pine wilt disease is spreading, now—when it is concentrated in certain areas—is the last golden time to break the spread," and "We will concentrate all capabilities of the Korea Forest Service to curb the spread of pine wilt disease and ease the public's anxiety and inconvenience."