in the forest also led them to report feeling happier, less anxious and
more optimistic about their futures, according to the lead study
author, Park Bum-Jin, a professor at the Lab of Forest Environment
and Human Health at Chungnam National University. A couple of
days after Kim’s program, I met him for green tea in the Seoul offices
of the Korea Forest Foundation.
“Kids with higher self-esteem are less likely to get addicted,” he
told me. Based on this work, he recommends that preteens get out in
nature for a half day or so every two weeks. “The philosophy of this
research is simple,” he explained. For these kids, “time spent in forest
is not more interesting than video games, like fruit is not more
delicious than junk food. We cannot make them stop playing games.
As we get older, we have a tipping point in judgment that we need
more fruits than junk food. As far as some time in forest, they can’t
play games during that time. As long as playing in forest is just fun
itself, it can make that tipping point come earlier.”
Park applauds the national plan that shepherds citizens into the
forests through work and school programs. Koreans have been so
intensively urban for long enough now—two or three generations—
that they don’t necessarily know what to do with themselves in the
woods. In this Confucian culture of master and student, it makes
sense to use rangers, guides and demarcated spaces—this hillside is
for healing! This one is for plain old recreation! Camp on this
platform here! Park pointed out that many Koreans have no hankering
whatsoever to get back to the land, so it’s especially important to
catch kids early enough that they learn a sense of ease in nature.
Interestingly, E. O. Wilson believes that the best window for the
conditioned learning of biophilia is before adolescence.
The forest campaign can’t come a moment too soon, Park said. He
fears a loss of transmission from one generation to the next.
“Children and the younger generation don’t really have experience in
nature; so many of them think of the forest as dirty or scary. If we