Korean Red Pine

The Korean Red Pine is Korea's favorite tree.  If you see Asian pictures with the mountains and twisted pine trees, those are usually red pine.  I picked up a book about them recently and discovered something about the Korean ideal of forests that was completely different that what I had ever experienced in America.  For those of you who are not familiar with forestry, I will start at the basics.  The trees that make up a forest can tell you how long the forest has been there.  Fast growing species indicate a young forest, while slow growing species mean its been there a long time.  This is why most of the wood we use is pine, pine grows very quickly. 
I bring this up because in Korea, the red pine forests started appearing around areas of agriculture and towns.   The forests were logged for buildings and then continuously picked over for wood and cleared for farmland.  Pines were the trees that came back quickly and could be maintained to provide constant wood supply.  They became the symbol for civilization in Korea.
Since Korea stopped burning wood so much, the forests are turning back into the slow growing tree species and the red pine forests are starting to disappear.
The most interesting part of this story was the final chapter of the book I read.  It was all about how if we don't do something soon, all the red pine forests will disappear.  The Korean red pine forest is the ideal forest for Korea.  I was always taught that this natural progression to a climax forest dominated by hardwoods was inevitable (without regular fire anyway), and natural.  Instead of wanting to go back to the pre-people era of Korea, they want to go back to the wood-burning era of Korea.  The idea of how forested Korea should look is different than I am used to.  Its another interesting culture difference.