---
title: "South Korea grows a forest in Mongolia’s dust"
description: "A decade of Korean tree-planting meets a Mongolian plan for a billion new trees"
author: "Albion Grey"
published: 2026-09-28T07:07:42.131Z
modified: 2026-09-29T07:24:40Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/south-korea-grows-a-forest-in-mongolia-s-dust-abd49e
language: en
tags: ["climate", "environment", "reforestation", "sand", "drought", "asia"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# South Korea grows a forest in Mongolia’s dust

*A decade of Korean tree-planting meets a Mongolian plan for a billion new trees*

By Albion Grey · September 28, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/south-korea-grows-a-forest-in-mongolia-s-dust-abd49e

## In brief

- Bayanhangai, a village of about 1,700 people 110km from Ulaanbaatar, had seen no trees for decades
- South Korean agencies and the civic group Green Asia have planted 70,000 trees on 1m square metres there since 2022
- Mongolia’s average temperature has risen about 2.5C since 1941; only 18% of its land escapes desertification
- Some 7.4m livestock died in 2024 and more than 1,100 lakes have disappeared since 1990
- Mongolia is running a campaign to plant 1bn trees by 2030 with Korean co-operation

Forests are usually older than the people who admire them. In Bayanhangai, a Mongolian village of about 1,700 souls some 110km west of Ulaanbaatar, the opposite is true. A correspondent for the Chosun Ilbo, a South Korean newspaper, who made the trip describes bare hills along the route and a final 6km of sand; when the wind blows, dust can blot out the road. A 65-year-old resident, Bodjav Tsengelsaikhan, told the paper that in the nearly 40 years since she arrived, aged about 20, “I never saw a tree.” With low buildings and no woods, dust storms routinely swallowed the village.

Now every villager knows the word for “forest”. Since 2022 South Korea’s Korea Forest Service and Korea Forestry Promotion Institute, together with Green Asia, a Korean environmental civic group, have planted more than 70,000 trees on 1m square metres of land beside the village — about 100 hectares. Behind a sign reading “Forest of Mutual Prosperity” in Korean stand rows of saplings one to two metres tall, with a greenhouse to raise more. Myagmardorj, the 44-year-old deputy head of the local district, admits villagers were puzzled when Koreans first arrived promising woods. Since the planting, he says, many residents report less blowing sand than before.

Mongolia, home to about 3.5m people, has been called the front line of climate change. Its territory is roughly 15 times the size of South Korea’s, dry inland steppe to begin with, and now warming fast: official figures show annual average temperatures up about 2.5C between 1941 and last year. Oyunsanaa, head of Mongolia’s forest agency, says the rise became conspicuous from the 1970s. A government survey found only about 18% of the country untouched by desertification and land degradation. More than 1,100 lakes have vanished since 1990; drought-stunted herds then die in the bitter winters. In 2024 alone some 7.4m head of livestock perished.

Mongolia’s desert is Korea’s problem too. According to the Korea Meteorological Administration, 81% of the yellow dust that afflicts South Korea originates in the Gobi desert and the Inner Mongolian plateau. That helps explain Green Asia’s persistence: founded in 1998, it has planted in Mongolia since 2000, setting up a permanent local branch in 2007. Across ten sites, including Bayanhangai, covering roughly 3m pyeong (nearly 10m square metres), it has put in about 1m trees — poplars, prized for purifying air and soil, and the vitamin-rich, sour-fruited “vitamin tree”. Villagers are taught about the trees, paid wages to plant and tend them, and joined by volunteers from Korean government bodies, local authorities and companies. A “paperless” scheme turns money saved when shoppers at CU and 7-Eleven convenience stores forgo paper receipts into funds for more planting.

The蒙古 government has now joined in with typical pastoral ambition: a national campaign to plant 1bn trees by 2030. Ms Oyunsanaa says Mongolia will keep co-operating with South Korea and apply its planting experience and results to official policy. One billion trees will not return 1,100 lost lakes. But as the residents of Bayanhangai are discovering, 70,000 of them can already quieten the wind.