Over the past three decades, the pulp and paper industry has been one of the fastest growing industries of Korea. The country's paper and paperboard consumption has grown at a rate of 14% per year from 0.05 million M/T in 1960s to 4.52 million M/T in 1990s, which is greater than the growth. rate of the general economy of the country.
With the limited potential of its own resources, the pulp and paper industry is heavily dependent upon the fiber resources of foreign, countries. The lack of fiber has led to an imbalance in the development of pulp and paper industry-few pulp mills and many paper mills. As a result, most paper mills rely heavily on imported pulp and wastepaper. This poor resource endowment has led the paper industry to adopt a technology which uses a high ratio of wastepaper upto 55%.