Korea Forest Service launches AI chatbot for forestry direct payment system

The Korea Forest Service has launched an AI chatbot service to handle a wide range of civil inquiries related to the forestry direct payment system.

The service, announced Thursday, is designed to help officials responsible for forestry direct payment administration quickly and easily verify payment requirements and relevant laws and guidelines, and process their work more efficiently.

The forestry direct payment system covers multiple business types — including small-scale forestry households, forest product production and silviculture — each with different payment requirements and compliance obligations. Because the relevant standards are scattered across laws, guidelines and public notices, frontline officials at township offices and regional forest services had to manually search for and verify the applicable rules each time they handled a civil complaint.

With the new AI chatbot, officials can type a question into a chat window and receive answers drawn from forestry direct payment reference materials, along with the source documents behind each response and similar past inquiries and replies. No separate software installation is required — the chatbot is accessible directly through the dedicated work network, the forestry direct payment work support system.

The service will initially be available to officials who operate and administer direct payment disbursements through the work support system. The Korea Forest Service expects the chatbot to reduce the time officials spend reviewing documents and to ensure that even newly assigned field staff can process cases quickly and accurately in line with legal and policy standards, raising both administrative efficiency and the quality of civil complaint handling.

Forest Industry Policy Bureau Director General Lee Sang-ik said accurate and prompt handling of civil complaints is critical because the forestry direct payment system exists to stabilize the income of forestry workers who protect the public value of forests. "We will use the AI chatbot to support frontline operations and continue expanding AI-driven system improvements and innovation in forest administration," he said.