South Korea- Potential Market for Russian Logs

Tak, K. (1994). South Korea- Potential Market for Russian Logs. IIASA Working Paper. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: WP-94-093

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Abstract

Korea with its over 40 million population and small forest land base relies heavily on imports for its wood consumption. Korea is usually the second largest log importer in the world after Japan. Since the worsening importing conditions in the traditional log suppling countries, Korea has always looked for alternative supply sources which could provide logs with better conditions. The Russian Far East has emerged as a new source of supply which could meet the conditions Korea looks for since Korea established diplomatic ties with the former Soviet Union in 1990.

The purpose of this paper is to help Russian forest sector best prepared for Korean market, since Korean market is relatively new to Russia but the market is growing and has a large potential for Russian logs. This paper includes two major parts: Korean forest sector and market potential for Russian logs in Korea. In the first, Korean forest sector is introduced of its resource base, demand and supply structure, and forest product industries. In the second part, Korean market is analyzed for characteristics of the market, imports of Russian logs, Russian logs substitutability for competitor logs, and limiting factors to increase the exports to Korea. This paper attempted to project an outlook of Russian log imports to Korea by year 2000 based upon three price scenarios.

This paper concludes that growing wood consumption in Korea and Russian logs superior wood properties to competitor logs will positively affect the outlook of using Russian logs in Korea. This paper also indicated that unification of two Koreas will be another positive factor to increase the level of imports of Russian logs to Korea.

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