South Korea is a key market for BC wood products, diversifying export risk for the provincial forest sector. The nation’s reliance on imported softwood, combined with government support for green building and the Canada-Korea Free Trade Agreement, creates ongoing opportunities for B.C. wood products. Additionally, value-added wood products present niche market potential.
Supported by FII, the Canada Wood Group leads market development programming in South Korea and continues work to expand opportunities for Canadian forest products, particularly in the construction sector. Efforts are focused on removing barriers to wood use, identifying and supporting market opportunities for Canadian wood products and developing and maintaining industry relationships.
Modular homes in South Korea have historically been targeted to the premium end of the marketplace, making the homes a niche market. Namuro Homes sees a much larger mainstream opportunity and is appealing to it with a new home—TORY (meaning small, yet robust)—that offers greater value without sacrificing looks or features.
Developed with input from Canada Wood, the TORY home cuts costs by using a 2×6 framework rather than the heavy timber typically used for modular homes. Cladding is premium B.C. cedar, with high-quality doors, windows and interior finishing rounding out the homes. The result is a product that cuts costs, but not quality.
Multi-family housing technology has gained attention in Korea as developers seek to improve the efficiency of their existing building portfolios and meet the growing demand for urban housing; however, until recently, barriers to wood use in multi-family housing construction had effectively blocked its uptake.
For the past 30 years, floor impact noise in multi-family wood frame houses in Korea has been evaluated using the “(big) bang machine”. The impact force of this tire drop machine is well above the range of typical impact forces found in residential housing and the testing method had long been criticized by the Korean wood construction industry.
In August 2022, years of technical work and submissions by Canada Wood and industry researchers paid dividends when Korean authorities announced that the impact ball—an alternative acoustic test that allows lighter wood-frame floor assemblies to meet performance requirements for sound mitigation—was replacing the bang machine.
Combined with earlier revisions to the Korea Design Standards that abolished total floor area and height limits for wood buildings, the new sound regulations are a game changer for the use of both light timber and mass timber construction in South Korea’s multi-family housing market.
The old saying that “mighty oak trees from tiny acorns grow” is definitely true in the case of the Dotori (acorn) kindergarten. Built as the first-ever Canadian Super E® public building in South Korea, the facility has achieved a number of milestones. First, it shows the market that a high degree of energy efficiency through wood-frame construction is possible; second, that local firms have the expertise to build to the high standards required by energy efficient systems like Super E®; and third, that the pre-fabrication used for much of the structure is an efficient construction approach in South Korea. Framing the building from pre-fabricated components took only five days—an incredibly fast timeline that has caught the attention of developers and builders. The little acorn planted with Dotori may soon flourish into much broader use of Super E®.
Originally developed by Natural Resources Canada, Super E® housing is a high-performance building methodology focusing on how a building must perform, rather than how it is built. This building system responds to Korea’s need for healthy, energy-efficient construction and is now delivered through the Korea Wood Construction Association with support by Canada Wood.
Led by BC Wood, efforts to boost sales of B.C. value-added wood products in South Korea are succeeding through targeting niche markets within larger market segments (such as secondary homes within the larger home construction sector). This approach maximizes the value of the marketing effort by reaching out to targeted individual buyers and developers.
Niche sectors now being developed in South Korea include: