Reviewing Classification Scheme of Timber Assets for the National Accounting in Korea

摘要

Due to the low productivity in timber harvesting, economic values of forest resources have been rarely validated in Korea. Since the Korea Forest Service provided a statistic of the timber assets for the survey of the 4th National Accounting (1998), no more statistics or measurements have been provided. Further, it becomes an issue that there is no clear standard to classify timber assets into produced or non-produced assets. In this research, we intended to provide a reasonable standard that enablesone to classify timber assets either in produced or non-produced assets. For this purpose, articles in the '1993 System of National Accounts (SNA)', which presented definitions and scopes of biological assets, were scanned. The articles related to timber assets in the Korean version of SNA were compared with those in the original version of SNA that were proposed by UN. The results show that the Korean version of SNA seems to have much emphasis on natural occurrence or plantation for the classificationstandard, while its original version rather focus on the existence of direct control, responsibility, and management by institutional units. According to the original version of SNA, naturally occurring assets, which were basically classified into non-produced assets, were treated as being cultivated and classified into the produced asset when they (or their growth) were under the direct control, responsibility, and management of institutional units. Therefore, a guidance was presented to renew the Korean version of SNA and to innovate the classification standards for timber assets.