From January 20 to January 22, 2020, the International Workshop for North Korean Agriculture and Forest Research was held at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences of Seoul National University. The theme of this workshop was “Agriculture and Forestry in North Korea” and seminar presentations of relevant research teams and discussions on publishing were conducted. For this purpose, 15 people participated including the dean and the executive department of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences of Seoul National University, professors of forest science, two professors of Environmental Plant Science and Natural Resources Department of Missouri State University, as well as scholars from the National Institute of Crop Science, Korea Rural Economic Institute, the Rural Development Administration, and Korea Forest Service.

 In the three-day seminar, solutions for agricultural development in North Korea were actively discussed. With different information including a presentation by Dr. Sung-Ki Heo of the National Institute of Crop Science and Plan for Inter-Korean Forest Cooperation presented by Dr. Chan-Shik Jung of Korea Forest Service, the scholars continued their thorough discussion on the methods of agricultural development in North Korea.

 Suk-Ha Lee, Dean of College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, expressed his gratitude toward scholars who participated in the workshop in his opening remark, and his hope to find a solution can be found to contribute to the agricultural development in North Korea, which largely falls behind in the fields of agriculture and forest, through the workshop.


Figure 1. Professor Yeo-Chang Yoon having a discussion at the workshop