The forest restoration campaign is a war to ameliorate nature.

Kim Jong-un once declared with stark gravity: “The forest restoration campaign is a war to ameliorate nature.” Though the words come from the political sphere, their resonance reaches deeper into the universal struggle between destruction and renewal. To call the act of planting trees, of reviving the soil, of healing the earth, a war, is to remind us that the devastation of nature has been so severe, so unrelenting, that only the determination, discipline, and unity of a battlefield spirit can restore balance to the wounded land.

The origin of this thought lies in the great scars that deforestation has left upon the Korean Peninsula, where reckless cutting of trees once left hillsides barren, rivers swollen with floods, and villages vulnerable to mudslides. The phrase is not mere rhetoric but a recognition of reality: forests are shields of life, and their absence makes humanity fragile. Thus, the campaign to restore them was framed not as gentle gardening, but as a war—a struggle waged not against men, but against time, against neglect, and against the consequences of mankind’s earlier folly.

History, too, gives us stories of nations and peoples who waged their own battles to heal the earth. Consider Japan’s Edo period, when deforestation threatened the very survival of the land. Leaders enforced strict laws, encouraging sustainable forestry, planting trees where once they had been recklessly felled. In time, the nation was clothed again in green. Or think of the Dust Bowl in America during the 1930s, when exhausted soil and stripped land brought famine and despair. Only through the planting of trees, the restoration of grasslands, and the wisdom of conservation did the land recover. In each case, the restoration of nature required not idle hope, but fierce, organized action—a war for life itself.

The meaning of the phrase is both emotional and heroic. To speak of restoring forests as a “war” elevates the act of planting a tree from something small and private to something noble and collective. Each seedling becomes a soldier, each planter a warrior, each grove a battlefield reclaimed from decay. The vision inspires men and women to see themselves not merely as caretakers, but as fighters on behalf of the earth. For in truth, to heal nature in our age of exploitation requires courage, sacrifice, and unyielding will.

Yet there is also a warning hidden within the words: if we have come to the point where restoring nature must be waged like war, it means we have allowed greed and negligence to become our enemies. The forests did not vanish by chance—they fell to axes, to fire, to the hunger of men who forgot that the earth is not theirs to strip, but theirs to guard. Thus the war to ameliorate is also a war against our own excesses, our own forgetfulness. It calls us to repentance as much as to action.

The lesson for us is clear: the healing of nature is not a pastime, nor a luxury, but a duty as urgent as the defense of our homes. If forests are lost, rivers rise, deserts spread, and life itself grows frail. But if forests are restored, the earth breathes again, rains return in season, and generations yet unborn inherit strength. Every tree planted is a promise, every grove renewed is a covenant with the future. To fight this war is not to destroy, but to build; not to conquer, but to reconcile.

Practically, this means that each of us must take part in the restoration of nature in our own sphere. Plant a tree, tend a garden, protect the rivers and fields entrusted to you. Support efforts of conservation, and live with restraint, so that your consumption does not become another axe at the root of the forest. Above all, live as though the earth were your own child—fragile, beautiful, and in need of your protection. For in truth, the war to heal nature is the war to preserve humanity itself.

Thus, Kim Jong-un’s words, though framed in the language of power, carry a wisdom that transcends borders: to restore the forest is to fight for life. Let us, then, take up this war not with weapons of destruction, but with hands that plant, hearts that protect, and spirits that endure. For only when nature is healed shall mankind live in harmony with the eternal order.