Lee Kang-oh, the president of Korea Forestry Promotion Institute (KoFPI), said “As KoFPI is celebrating the 10th anniversary next year and relocating to Daejeon soon enough, we are preparing ‘Daejeon Era’ with the long-term development strategy.”
“We can contribute to the domestic economy with a paradigm shift for the utilization of well-cultivated forest.” President Lee said. Here are some excerpts of the written interview between NewsWorld and KoFPI President Lee.
Question: Will you introduce our readers to the overall of Korea Forestry Promotion Institute?
Answer: KoFPI is a public agency of Korea Forest Service, specialized in spreading forest science technologies and creating high values in forestry sectors.
The institute is located in Deungchon-dong, Gangseo-gu, Seoul and has branches in Daejeon(Forest Pests & Diseases Monitoring Center), Indonesia and Paraguay(Overseas plantation pilot projects).
Around 270 staffers are doing their best every day, to provide forest food security and better forest services to our clients.
Q: what do you think the forestry is?
A: Long story short, “Forestry” refers to all the activities related to creating values through forests and mountains.
In the past, forestry only referred to the economic activities in forests, such as cultivating shitake mushrooms, walnuts or harvesting timbers and so on.
However, the definition of forestry has expanded to all the activities creating social and environmental values from forests and mountains.
Q: Would you explain us about the main business of the institute?
A: KoFPI consists of 6 headquarters and 24 offices in total. We have three major goals. First goal is reinforcing the competency of forest households with raising foresters’ capabilities.
Second one is to create the momentum in the forestry industry through fostering timber companies and improving the quality of wooden product. Last one is to utilize sustainable forest resources in efficient way, so that we can promote forest value in near future.
KoFPI released “K-Forest Food,” a national integrated forest product brand, this year. This photo show pasta made with bracken and fresh foods.
Q: Would you tell us about the main issues with the institute of this year?
A: This year, we have released “K-Forest Food”, which is the integrated brand of forest food in Korea. We are planning to promote the purity and excellence of forest food worldwide under the name of “K-Forest Food”. Main customers of forest food for now are those in 40s to 60s.
However, with the catchphrase “Little Forest on Your Table”, we would like to suggest the whole new lifestyle of forest food which can be also embraced by Millennials and Gen Z.
We will do our best to make this brand into one of representative brands of Korea with systemic operation such as thorough screening of the quality committee.
Q: KoFPI has been 10 years, Congratulation! What is the upcoming strategy of the institute?
A: Our priority is to promote the rights of our core customers, the foresters, such as raising their incomes and diversifying potentials of forest village, which is the background of forestry.
Furthermore, as the relocation to Daejeon has been determined in last October, we are making our long-term strategy based on Daejeon.
For the half of the century, the government has leaded managing and conserving our forest. We should make paradigm shift at this point right now, to utilize this well-cultivated woods so that we can contribute to domestic economy.
To make this happen, we should build organic relationship among industry, academia and government sectors.
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