[The Hwankyung Ilbo] The Korea Forest Service's National Forest Research Institute (Director Park Hyun) said it analyzed 270,000 articles on forest roads exposed to major portal sites using text mining techniques, a big data analysis method, to examine the flow of forest path policies that have been implemented for 10 years since 2011.

According to the analysis, the number of forest road-related reports increased 17.8% annually from 2011 to 2019, but in 2020, it decreased by 2,400 (5.5%) from the previous year.

In the word frequency analysis, "Creation" and "Walking" repeatedly appeared in first and second places, and words that reflected characteristic issues such as the creation of Jirisan Dulegil (2012) and Seoul Dulegil (2014), fine dust (2019) and Covid-19 (2020) appeared. 

In particular, the year 2020 was Covid-19, a different type from the frame that was reported by the existing media, and among them, "Healing" was in the top 20 from 2013 to 2019, but it soared to ninth place in relation to coronavirus in 2020.

It is analyzed that the media is delivering forest roads as a meaning of "healing" to the people as interest in the healing function of forests increases due to the outbreak of coronavirus 19.

In addition, the analysis of emotional words showed that positive words had the highest ratio of 59.9 to 63.8 percent, including "natural," "beautiful," and "good," and negative words were "sad" and "rejective" as they were used to introduce forest paths. 

From 2011 to 2019, detailed emotional changes were similar without much difference, but in 2020, new words such as "depressed" and "frustrating" appeared due to the Covid-19 virus, greatly changing the ratio of detailed emotions.

In particular, as a result of CONCOR analysis, which allows analysis of grouped words by tying them together with words with high ratio, forest path characteristics and construction projects appeared in all years.

From 2011 to 2019, it was grouped into similar types, but it was divided into creation and business in 2020, and it was clearly different from the previous types, with the emergence of new tourism groups.

Through this study, it was confirmed that the forest road was reported as a frame centered on the government's creation project, and it was meaningful in that it was expanded to a place to solve social problems such as Covid-19 last year. 

"Looking back on the past 10 years, when we focused on creating forest paths through media reports, we need to come up with policies on sustainable management after completing the forest road construction project," said Seo Jung-won, director of Forest Human Services Research at the National Forest Research Institute.

He added, "We need to scientifically save the healing and healing effects of depression or frustration caused by the use of forest roads, and at the same time, we need to prepare a safe way to use forest roads, non-face-to-face experience and guidance in the Covid-19 era."

The findings were published in the 28th volume of Forest Economic Research (June 2021), an academic journal dealing with forest, forestry, and mountain villages in Korea.