**4. Conclusions**

To achieve the UN's SDG Goal 15 (forest management) within South Korea's CCZ, it is essential to detect areas requiring restoration and management. Classification of remote sensing imagery showed that the predominant spatial patterns in this area's forest LULC change were from forest to settlement, cropland, grassland and bare land.

Our Hot spot analysis enabled an intuitive analysis of these patterns and facilitated the identification of areas requiring intensive management. High distribution densities of such changes occurred in Ganghwa-gun, Gimpo-si, Paju-si and Yeoncheon-gun. The main causes of forest area change were agricultural activities (rice paddies and fields) and the development and expansion of villages. Increasing degradation at the forest edge caused by increasing proportions of cropland, grassland and bare land was directly associated with increasing deterioration of vegetation and deforestation. Due to the unique nature of the CCZ, deforestation and degradation, once done, is difficult to reverse.

Structural equation modeling determined the effects of factors associated with forest change. Of the three factors extracted (topography, accessibility and socioeconomic characteristics), the accessibility factor (proximity to buildings, roads and the CCZ) showed the strongest effect on forest change, above all on changes to bare land. The topographic factor (elevation and slope) also had grea<sup>t</sup> influence on forest change, above all on changes to grassland. These factors are therefore strong indicators of high degrees of deforestation and degradation.

According to previous studies, deforestation and degradation in the CCZ increases in proportion to the level of forest changes for the purposes of building military facilities, strategic roads, villages and ginseng cultivation, resulting in accelerated damage to the ecosystems in the CCZ. Such damaged areas are also problematic because they can contribute to natural disasters such as floods due to the degraded and deforested landscape. Achieving the SDGs' forest managemen<sup>t</sup> goals is important for both forest conservation and providing benefits such as biodiversity, carbon sinks, water purification and storage and recreation. These results provide practical data for preparing direct and indirect measures necessary for improved forest managemen<sup>t</sup> programs in the CCZ.

**Author Contributions:** J.L. conceived and designed the experiments; J.P. performed the experiments and analyzed the data; J.P. and J.L. wrote the paper together. J.L. contributed to the modification. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

**Funding:** This study was carried out with the support of 'R&D Program for Forest Science Technology (Project No. "2017045B10-1819-BB01")' provided by Korea Forest Service (Korea Forestry Promotion Institute).

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
