Busan to Construct Forest Experience Education Center in Sasang-gu

Busan City has unveiled its plans to construct an eco-friendly wooden structure called the Forest Experience Education Center in Sasang Neighborhood Park, Sasang-gu, Busan. The project, worth KRW 13 billion, is expected to be completed by 2026. After winning the "2023 Domestic Wood Construction Demonstration Project" contest organized by the Forest Service, the city decided to undertake this project. The competition aims to promote the use of domestic wood, reduce carbon emissions, and revive wood construction to tackle the climate crisis. Out of the six cities and provinces that participated in the contest, Busan was selected based on its performance in the first document evaluation and the second presentation evaluation.

As a result of winning the competition, the city will receive KRW 65 billion from the Korea Forest Service to complete the Forest Experience Education Center, which will serve as a specialized forest and wood culture experience space for children. The center will offer a range of facilities, including a forest experience exhibition hall, a wood imagination playroom, an infant forest learning room, a customized woodworking experience center, a forest book cafe, and other amenities, all designed to foster children's balanced development and holistic growth through diverse experiences related to forest ecology and woodworking. It will also function as a systematic forest education space for groups and families.

In addition to the Forest Experience Education Center, the city will invest KRW 25 billion in municipal expenses to create an infant experience forest. The forest will feature a five-sensory experience center, forest playground, forest classroom, outdoor woodworking experience center, and forest exploration path. The city will organize a range of programs connected to the Forest Experience Education Center to offer various experiences and play spaces that use natural elements like wood, soil, and stone to engage the senses in a healthy forest.

Furthermore, the city plans to deploy forest education experts, such as forest interpreters, early childhood forest instructors, and wood education experts, to operate the Forest Experience Education Center systematically. The experts will provide woodworking experience education by level, forest experience education, sharing education for the underprivileged, cultural programs for residents, and various events and exhibitions with wood and forest themes.

With the increasing importance of wood as a carbon store created by nature and eco-friendly building material, the city expects the Forest Experience Education Center to become a leading model for realizing carbon neutrality by 2050 and playing a vital role in forest education to learn and practice carbon-neutral values.

Busan Mayor Park Hyung-jun expressed his enthusiasm for the project, stating that "the Forest Experience Education Center is expected to be a foundation for growing children to learn the importance of the forest by interacting with the forest, as well as to learn the value of realizing carbon neutrality and grow into healthy members of the future generation." He added, "We will do our best to establish the Forest Experience Education Center as an excellent eco-friendly wooden building and a model for realizing carbon neutrality."