Public vote to weigh in on Korea Forest Service performance awards

Public votes will now carry weight in determining performance bonuses for Korea Forest Service employees who have achieved exceptional results, with rankings from the public vote applied as bonus points in the review process.

The Korea Forest Service announced Monday it will hold an online public vote as part of its "2026 Special Performance Bonus Regular Awards" to identify and recognize outstanding achievements in forest administration from the public's perspective.

This year's awards introduce a public voting component that feeds directly into the evaluation process, and the pool of eligible recipients has been expanded from civil servants to all staff, including public service workers.

A total of 27 submissions were received, covering a wide range of forest administration areas — among them wildfire and landslide response, domestic timber utilization technology development, AI-driven improvements to civil complaint handling, and forest valley maintenance using the open-source desktop geographic information system QGIS.

The public vote is open to anyone from Monday through Friday on the Sotong Hyeoksin 24 website.

The Korea Forest Service will factor vote rankings into the review as bonus points, then convene an evaluation committee to select the final award recipients, with the special performance bonuses to be presented in November.

"We want to reflect achievements that the public can actually feel in their daily lives and to shine a light on the efforts of staff who have quietly worked hard in the field," Korea Forest Service Commissioner Park Eun-sik said. "We ask for your interest and participation in this vote to find the outstanding achievements of forest administration for the people."