It has been 35 years since the Mt Paektu area was registered as the DPRK’s first world biosphere reserve.

According to data, about 740 areas in over 130 countries were registered as world biosphere reserves up to 2022, forming an international biosphere reserve network and promoting scientific research, education, and tourism and other economic activities on an international scale and cooperation among countries and regions.

The DPRK’s world biosphere reserves are the Mt Paektu area (registered in 1989), Mt Kuwol area (2004), Mt Myohyang area (2009), Mt Chilbo area (2014) and Mt Kumgang area (2018).

Under the country’s nature conservation policy, the Mt Paektu area was designated as a plant reserve in April 1946 and then a nature reserve and a special reserve of revolutionary battle sites before it was registered as a world biosphere reserve in April 1989.

The 132 000-hectare reserve encompasses Paektu (2 750m), the highest mountain in the country, and the area adjacent to it, including the city of Samjiyon, Ryanggang Province.

The reserve with unique history of formation, peculiar natural and geographical features and rich biodiversity, consists of the core area, buffer area and transitional area—each distinctly compartmentalized from the other—and is wide enough to function as a biosphere reserve.

It contains well-developed strata of different eras from Proterozoic to Cenozoic and is divided into the wide lava area at the southern foot of Mt Paektu, mountainous area which constitutes its mountain body and basin region.

According to altitudes, the soil is different ranging from pumice soil, and alpine meadow to alpine podzolic soil.

The scenery of the mountain is quite spectacular as Janggun, its highest peak, and a series of other high steep peaks surround Lake Chon on its summit like a folding screen.

The climate in the reserve is typical alpine one characterized by low temperature, in fact the lowest in the country, ever-changing weather and complicated climatic phenomena.

The natural elements of Mt Paektu—geology and landform created through many volcanic eruptions and in the course of evolution, fauna and flora, hydrological regime created under the influence of Lake Chon, soil formed in relation with pumice eruption and alpine plants—offer peculiar natural environment, the kind of which can hardly be seen in the world, to say nothing of the country.

The fauna and flora of the reserve have constantly been changed due to several volcanic eruptions.

An alpine area which is connected with the Asian Continent by land, the reserve has a diverse range of plants which accord with the elements of climatic zones and a unique range of animals adapted to its severe climate and geographical and geological environment. The reserve is literally a nature park as it is a habitat for hundreds of species of vertebrate animals like mammals and birds, as well as more than a thousand of species of invertebrate animals.

In the country several units in the fields of scientific research and land and environmental protection are regularly engaged in monitoring, researching, managing and conserving the reserve.

Ri Chung Song