Korea Forest Service seeks public participants for mountain village forest travel program

The Korea Forest Service announced Monday it is recruiting public participants to experience and evaluate candidates for its "Top 10 Mountain Village Forest Travel Routes."

The program aims to develop high-quality forest tourism products to revitalize struggling mountain village communities.

Moving away from a supply-side approach, participants will assess each route from the traveler's perspective, evaluating its appeal, accommodation conditions, economic value, safety and connection to local income generation. They will visit sites in Yeongyang-gun, North Gyeongsang Province, including a premium birch forest, a natural recreation forest and mountain village experience communities.

Three teams of two to four members each will be selected. Any member of the public with an interest in forests and travel is eligible to apply.

Applications are open June 8 through June 17 via the Korea Forest Service website. Final participants will be announced June 18 following an internal review, and the selected group will conduct an on-site verification tour June 25 to 26 (one night, two days).

Jang Min-young, head of the Forest Recreation and Healing Division at the Korea Forest Service, said the program is "not simply a sightseeing trip, but an important process for validating a tourism revenue model that can revive the mountain village economy." He called for broad public interest in joining the effort to "rediscover the value of forest resources and create mountain villages people want to visit and live in" through the identification of 10 forest travel routes.