“A Good Tree Is a Fast-Growing Tree”: South Korea’s Reforestation in the 1950s and the Making of Cold War Ecology in East Asia

This article reexamines the early history of reforestation in postwar South Korea, focusing on the 1950s, a decade typically overshadowed by the authoritarian tree-planting campaigns of the Park Chung Hee era. American aid agencies and South Korean foresters jointly promoted a model of preservation forestry that prioritized a few fast-growing species such as pitch pine, black locust, and Manchurian alder over ecological diversity. This shift was part of a broader U.S. strategy of “green imperialism,” which aimed to stabilize Northeast Asian agriculture while turning Southeast Asian forests into timber reserves. At the local level, South Korea’s Village Forestry Associations (VFAs), originally a colonial institution, became key actors in mobilizing peasant labor through a mix of incentives and education. While U.S. advisors celebrated the VFAs as examples of grassroots democracy, the resulting reforestation was less a democratic achievement than an artificial ecosystem sustained by international funding, peasant labor, and postcolonial compromises.