Because a total of 1,386 pines that are 70 to 80 years old have been cut down on Mt. Geundsm to prevent the spread of pine wilt, the mountain, has become almost bald. Its hills are covered with lumber cut into one-meter pieces.   Branches from infested trees are broken into pieces so that the pinewood nematodes cannot live on them. All of the twigs are burned and the roots are fumigated at high temperatures, covered with vinyl, and buried in the ground.

Kim Jong-won  is concerned because Japanese pine sawyers, which carry the nematodes, move two to three kilometers a year under their own power but 35km  when they are moved by the wind.  The nematode-infested area is only 10km away from thick pine forests of Daegwanryeong and only 15km away from the center of the Baekdu Range. Kim is worried that all the pines in Gangwon Province may die if the nematodes spread to other regions as a result of lax pest control.

“We have a glimmer of hope because no pine disease vector has been found 800 meters above sea level, and pine sawyers are known to be inactive in regions with low temperatures,” said Jang. “The southern part of Japan suffered greater damage from nematode infestation than the northern part.”

A total of 1.371 million hectares or 81 percent of the entire area of Gangwon Province is forested, including 255,000 hectares of pinewoods. But pines in tens of thousands hectares were destroyed by pine needle gall midge that infested Seo-myeon, Chuncheon in 1968 and a series of wildfires since 2000.

Pinewood nematodes were first found in Mt. Geumjeong, Busan in 1988 and spread to Andong, North Gyeongsang Province. It has spread to 5,111 hectares of woods in 51 areas nationwide up until now.