Korea Forest Service "5-Year Grace Period Ends, Tree Doctor System Fully Implemented"

The Tree Doctor System will be fully implemented starting this month. The system stipulates that only Type 1 Tree Hospitals, which possess two types of national professional qualifications?Tree Doctors and Tree Treatment Technicians?can provide tree medical services.

The Korea Forest Service announced on the 27th that the operation of Type 2 Tree Hospitals, which had been temporarily maintained for the past five years, will end on the 28th of this month (grace period expiration).

The Tree Doctor System was newly introduced in 2018. However, a grace period was applied to minimize confusion and conflicts in the field following the system’s introduction.

Accordingly, from now on, all activities related to diagnosing and prescribing treatment for tree damage, as well as preventing and treating such damage, can only be conducted at Type 1 Tree Hospitals.

Even for Type 1 Tree Hospitals, tree medical services can only continue if the affiliated workers newly acquire Tree Doctor qualifications or if a Tree Doctor is employed, thereby meeting the registration criteria. If only qualified personnel such as Plant Protection Engineers are working, Type 1 Tree Hospitals cannot maintain tree medical services.

Type 2 Tree Hospitals can maintain tree medical services if they meet the registration criteria and newly register as Type 1 Tree Hospitals.

To partially ease the burden of converting to Type 1 Tree Hospitals, the Korea Forest Service will allow the corporate diagnosis report, which was required when registering a Tree Hospital, to be temporarily replaced with financial statements or tax-related documents until December 31 of this year.

Additionally, to minimize inconvenience for users of tree medical services, Type 1 Tree Hospitals whose operations are suspended due to failure to meet registration criteria after the 28th of this month, or Type 2 Tree Hospitals whose operations are terminated, will be allowed to continue performing tree medical service contracts signed before June 28 until the contracts are completed.

However, in such cases, the tree medical service project owner must be informed of the relevant disposition, and their intention to continue performance must be confirmed.

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