DAEJEON — "Please pick the best in forestry administration."
The Korea Forest Service said on the 12th that it will hold a nationwide online vote for its 2026 Special Performance Awards, which are given annually, aiming to identify and reward notable achievements in forestry administration from the public's point of view.
The special performance award program pays cash prizes to employees who deliver exceptional results in the course of their work.
For this round, the agency is introducing a public vote so that citizens' assessments feed into the review process, and is expanding eligibility from civil servants to all staff, including public service workers.
A total of 27 entries were submitted this year. They cover a range of forestry administration areas, including responses to wildfires and landslides, the development of technology for using domestic timber, the use of artificial intelligence to improve the handling of public complaints, and the maintenance of forest valleys based on QGIS, an open-source desktop geographic information system.
Anyone can vote from Oct. 12 to Oct. 16 on the Sotong Innovation 24 website.
The agency will factor bonus points based on vote rankings into its review, select the final award recipients through a deliberation committee, and present the special performance awards in November.
"We want to reflect achievements that the public actually feels in these awards, and to share with the public the results of employees who have worked quietly in the field," Korea Forest Service Administrator Park Eun-sik said.