Kingdom of Pines: State Forestry and the Making of Early Modern Korea, 1392-1910

Spanning over five hundred years, the “Pine Administration” (songjŏng) system of Korea’s Chosŏn dynasty (1392-1910) was the longest continuous state forestry regime in world history. Established in the early fifteenth century, the Pine Administration system consisted of hundreds of pine forests across the Korean peninsula reserved for “state use," largely for edifice, warship, and coffin construction. It was a system envisioned by bureaucrats and sustained through a network of magistrates, military officers, and wardens. The protection of a single, easily identifiable conifer instilled predictability and perpetuated the key role that pines played in Chosŏn society and culture. Due to government policy, Pinus densiflora, Pinus thunbergii, and related Pinus trees became dominant sylvan species across much of the Korean peninsula.  

How did a pre-industrial, agrarian polity maintain a forestry system for half a millennium? How did state and society make the necessary adjustments to protect pine forests for generation after generation?  To answer these questions, this presentation focuses on the intersection of the Chosŏn state, local society, and forestry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this era, the Choson state increasingly accommodated local forms of forest management known as kye – ironically, local organizations that had partly arisen in response to government encroachment. Using sources such as government records and private diaries, I show how synergies with the state and among inter-village groups were decisive in shaping Korea's society and ecology before the modern era. 

John S. Lee is Assistant Professor in East Asian History at Durham University. He is an environmental historian of early modern East Asia, particularly the Korean peninsula, with transregional interests in: comparative histories of pre-industrial forestry; the history of pine; the premodern history of the conservationist state; and the long-term environmental legacies of Eurasian empires.

Previously, he was Presidential Fellow in Environmental History at the University of Manchester and a postdoctoral fellow in the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University. He received his Ph.D in History and East Asian Languages in 2017 from the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University.

This event is part of the Ra Jong-Yil Forum in Korean Studies.