Korea Forest Service, Discovers and Designates 'Forest-Type Preliminary Social Enterprises'

Diagram of Designation and Support Procedures for Preliminary Social Enterprises in Forestry. Provided by the Korea Forest Service

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] The Korea Forest Service is launching an initiative to discover ‘forest-type preliminary social enterprises.’ The identified enterprises can receive benefits from growth support projects through designation as preliminary social enterprises.

The Korea Forest Service announced on the 7th that it will recruit the ‘3rd round of forest-type preliminary social enterprises in 2020’ until the 24th of this month.

Forest-type preliminary social enterprises are designated to strengthen the employment safety net for vulnerable groups in response to the resurgence of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19).

Applications can be submitted online through the Korea Social Enterprise Promotion Agency’s integrated information system. Previously, applications for forest-type preliminary social enterprises required online submission to the Korea Social Enterprise Promotion Agency followed by separate submission of copies of documents to the Korea Forestry Promotion Institute, but from this month, the process has been simplified to be completed through online submission only.

Once designated as a forest-type preliminary social enterprise, the Korea Forest Service (Korea Forestry Promotion Institute) provides growth support such as capacity-building education, market development, and management consulting. Additionally, the Ministry of Employment and Labor (local governments) separately supports labor costs and project development expenses.

Meanwhile, the Korea Forest Service has been focusing on realizing social value in the COVID-19 era by designating 29 preliminary social enterprises in two rounds in May and August.

According to statistics from the Korea Social Enterprise Promotion Agency, the Korea Forest Service ranks second overall in the number of designations in the first half of this year.

Kim Jong-geun, head of the Forest Job Startup Team at the Korea Forest Service, said, “The Korea Forest Service will discover and nurture preliminary social enterprises that lead the enhancement of social value such as employment for vulnerable groups and regional economic growth by utilizing forest resources. We will innovate regulations on preliminary social enterprises and strive to provide more support to these enterprises.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.