• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.79 no.4
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• pp.413-418
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• 1990

Since 1945, the periodical reforestation projects considered as the fundamental apparatus of the forest policy of the Government have been continuously carried out during last 40 years in Korea. As a result, some of the forests are ready to be harvested, especially in well-managed plantations as well as in the natural forests. This requires to pay more attention to harvesting the timber rather than planting trees. At the present, such timber harvesting operations such as cutting, felling, bucking, and skidding and yarding, particularly yarding operations in mountain areas with harsh terrains are in the most cases depend upon man power. However, the yarding operations should be more mechanized in the near future in Korea mainly because of the high cost of labour couppled with the lack of labour in forested areas. The Forest Work Training Center attached to the Forest Administration imported and tested the smallsized cable crane(K-300) with movable tower. The result of economic analysis of the yarding operation expenditures shows that the cable crane yarding costs more than the man yarding at the present time. As the labour cost will gradually increase and the efficiency of machine operation will improve, the results of the study indicates that the yarding operation by cable crane will be more cost-effective in the future.