Study on trends and characteristics of timber supply and demand in Korea

Timber consumption in Korea reached around 27 million m³ a year while the self-sufficiency rate for timber is only 16.2%. Although the rate has been increasing gradually due to recent afforestation projects and renewal of tree species that increased the production of domestic timber, domestically produced timber is mostly small-diameter logs and Korea still depends on imports for large-diameter logs. For the import of log, New Zealand which represents Radiatapine'species accounts for as much as 68% (as of 2013) of the total log import. Contrary to the recent decrease of log imports, the import of timber products such as sawn timber has increased continuously; however, log is still major import item as the sawn timber accounts for 30% of log and sawn timber imports. On the other hand, PB and MDF are showing strong competitive relationship with plywood in Korea. From the 2000's, the domestic production and market scale of PB and MDF are expanding due to the increasing use of timber as interior materials following the demand for qualitative enhancement of residential environment along with the economic development. Especially, MDF accounts for 57% of timber board (plywood, PB, MDF) production.